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132 Fla. 659

181 So 901

Powell v. State

Supreme Court of Florida

Decided June 8, 1938

Supreme Court of Florida · decided 1938-06-08

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1938-06-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently June 2009

6 state decisions

2019381940195019601970198019902000decided

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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Buford, J.

¶1 Plaintiff in error, being convicted of the statutory offense of the larceny of “one bull, the property of D. C. Arrant,” sued out writ of error.

¶2 The transcript of the record shows that the State failed to prove that the offense, if committed at all, was committed in Holmes County, Florida.

¶3 Proof of venue is essential and cannot be left to guess work on the part of the jury. The only evidence on this point is:

¶4 “My name is D. C. Arrant and I live in Holmes County in the northeast corner, I think, beat 2 or 4, just over the line. I know Hub Powell and he lives in the same community where I live, about a,quarter of a mile from me. I owned a certain- bull yearling on about the 14th day of July and I missed him. Afterwards I found him in Hartford, Alabama. 'He used about two miles from my place. I had missed him about two months before I found him.”

¶5 So there is no evidence even that the bull “used” in Holmes County, Florida, and certainly not a vestige of evidence that it was stolen, if it was stolen, in that county.

¶6 Therefore, the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.

¶7 So ordered.

¶8 Reversed.

Wi-iitfifxd, Terrell, Brown and Chapman, J. J., concur.
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