Williams v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided February 6, 1903

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1903-02-06

<p>Indictment for misdemeanor. Before Judge Nottingham. City court of Macon. December 15, 1902.</p>

Relies on Stevenson v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1903-02-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 1955

12 state decisions

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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Simmons, C. J.

¶11. Section 396 of the Penal Code, making it penal to use obscene, vulgar, or profane language in the presence of a female, must be held, under the rule of strict construction applicable to penal statutes, to contemplate spoken words only. Stevenson v. State, 90 Ga. 456.

¶22. Where, therefore, an indictment alleged that the accused used obscene and vulgar language in the presence of a female by delivering to her a written communication set out in the indictment, a demurrer thereto on the ground that the indictment charged no offense against the laws of this State should have been sustained.

¶3Judgment reversed.

By five Justices.

Indictment for misdemeanor. Before Judge Nottingham. City court of Macon. December 15, 1902.

Charles H. Hall Jr., for plaintiff in error.William, Bnmson, solicitor-general, contra.