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12 Ala. App. 293

Thomas v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided April 20, 1915

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1915-04-20

<p>1. IntocsicaMng Liquors; JSvklence; Sufficiency. — Where the evidence was sufficient to afford a basis for an inference that the defendant was guilty of violating the prohibition law, the defendant was not entitled to have all the evidence excluded, as its sufficiency to sustain a conviction was for the jury.</p> <p>2. Same. — Where there was evidence that the prohibited liquor was kept in a store or shop, the court properly instructed the jury that proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and to a moral certainty that defendant bad the prohibited -liquor on bis premises, and that such premises were not used exclusively as a dwelling, would be prima -facie evidence that he kept the liquor for sale, or with intent to sell the same contrary to law, under section 4, Acts 1909, p. 64.</p> <p>3. Same; Instruction. — The charge asserting that if defendant’s only connection with the prohibited liquor consisted in depositing a package behind a counter, without knowledge or notice of its contents, and in changing a dollar for the negro who sold- it, and that, if he in no way aided in the sale or delivery of the liquor, the jury should find for the defendant, should have been given.</p> <p>4. Charge of Court; Want of Bvidence. — There is no obligation resting upon a trial court to instruct that there is or is not evidence of certain facts.</p>

Relies on Tice v. State · Staples v. Steed

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Reversed and remanded on rehearing · Decided 1915-04-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 1949

4 state decisions

201915192019301940decided

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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PELHAM, P. J.

¶1The facts testified to- by the state’s witnesses as to the transaction in which the defendant whs seen to change some money with and give to the supposed “go-between” a paper sack containing six half pints of whisky, which he delivered to the state’s witnesses in completing a sale between them, for which the said witnesses had previously furnished the money with the understanding that they were to receive the whisky, were sufficient to afford a basis for an inference of the defendant’s guilt of the crime charged, and the court properly submitted that question to the jury, and refused *296to exclude the evidence on defendant’s motion. It was a question of the weight of the evidence being sufficient for a conviction, and that is always a question for the jury.—Tice v. State, 3 Ala. App. 164, 57 South. 506.

¶2The excerpt from the oral charge set out, to which an exception was reserved, in view of the evidence that the prohibited liquor was in a store or shop, was a correct statement of the law. — Acts Sp. Sess. 1909, p. 64, § 4.

¶3The evidence of the defendant’s guilt was sufficient to justify the court in refusing to give the general charge' requested by the defendant and the special charge that there was no evidence that defendant kept prohibited liquors for sale. There is no obligation on the court to give charges to the effect that there is no evidence of certain facts.—Staples v. Steed, 6 Ala. App. 594, 60 South. 499.

¶4The other written charge (the charges in the record are not designated so that they may be more definitely referred to) is argumentative, and states no proposition of law.

¶5The record presents no reversible error.

¶6Affirmed.

¶7ON APPLICATION POR REHEARING.

¶8Upon a reconsideration of the case on the defendant’s application for a rehearing, we are of the opinion that the written charge refused to the defendant and referred to in the original opinion as being argumentative is not subject to that criticism. The charge, we think, is good, and should have been given, and its refusal by the trial court is error that will require a reversal of the judgment and remandment of the case for another trial, and it is so ordered.

¶9Other propositions insisted upon in the application do not require discussion, as they relate to questions *297upon which we passed in the original consideration of the case, and our views as there expressed on these matters seem to us to be correct.

¶10Reversed and remanded.

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