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117 Ala. 22

Granison v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1897

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1897-11-15

Tried-before the Hon. John Moo:re. The appellant was tried and convicted under the following indictment: “The grand jury of said county charge that before the finding of this indictment, Mose Rodgers, alias Moses Rodgers, Page Granison and Tom Grimes, alias Thomas Grimes, did willfully set fire to or burn the store of Henry Gray, which, with the property therein contained at the time,' was of the value of' five hundred dollars,” Tliere was a severance as to the appellant,…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently August 1954

10 state decisions

601897190019101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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HEAD, J.

¶1The indictment charges arson — the burning of a store, not the burning of the property therein *25contained.' The degree of the arson is determinable', it is ti-ue, by the value of the store and the property therein contained, but the offense is the burning of the store. If both be of the value of $500 or more, it is arson in the second degree, if the store be burned under circumstances constituting arson, although not an article of the property contained therein be burned. So, the injury constituting the offense is to the store, and its ownership only need be alleged.

¶2There was sufficient evidence to carry to the jury the question whether the house was burned by accident or design — therefore sufficient evidence of the corpus delicti. to let in a confession, express or implied, of the defendant. The implied confession testified toby the witnesses, Andrew Dale and Ed Welsh, was properly admitted.

¶3It was within the discretion of the court to allow additional evidence of the value of the property, after the defendant closed his evidence — a discretion not revisable here.

¶4Charges 1 and 2 requested by defendant were argumentative, and charge 3 was abstract.

¶5The oral charge excepted to was proper under the evidence.

¶6Affirmed.

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