Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

12 Ga. App. 551

Sims v. State

Court of Appeals of Georgia

Decided April 2, 1913

Court of Appeals of Georgia · decided 1913-04-02

Indictment for arson; from Madison superior court—Judge Meadow. December 7, 1912. The accused—a negro boy—was charged with having burned a barn. The fire was discovered between ten and eleven o’clock at night. The roof and the upper part of the barn were then burning. It contained hay and fodder. The accused was arrested several days later, and confessed that he set fire to the barn.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The circumstances relied on in this ease are entirely too inconclusive. There is no evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption that the burning was accidental. This being so, the evidence was not sufficient to authorize the conviction.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 14 Ga. App. 28 - Sims v. State

Relies on Bines v. State · West v. State · 7 Ga. App. 389 - Wright, Williams & Wadley v. Brown

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1913-04-02

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently June 1975

4 state decisions

201913192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Pottle, J.

¶1The accused was convicted of arson, and excepted to the overruling of his motion for a new trial. The principal contention made by his counsel in this court is, that there was no proof of the corpus delicti. In an arson case the corpus delicti consists of the burning of the house by some criminal agency. West v. State, 6 Ga. App. 105 (64 S. E. 130). There was proof of a confession, but it is well settled that the corpus delicti must be proved aliunde the confession. West v. State, supra;Huey v. State, 7 Ga. App. 389 (66 S. E. 1023); Bines v. State, 118 Ga. 320 (45 S. E. 376, 68 L. R. A. 33); Davenport v. State, ante, 102. The presumption is that the burning was the result of either accident or some providential cause, rather than of some criminal design. Id.Where circumstantial evidence is relied on to overcome this presumption, it must be sufficient to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis than that the house was feloniously burned. The circumstances relied on in this case are entirely too inconclusive. There is no evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption that the burning was accidental. This being so, the. evidence was not sufficient to authorize the conviction. .

¶2Judgment reversed.

/12/gaapp/551 · .json · Public domain