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146 Ga. 346

Thomas v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided December 19, 1916

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1916-12-19

<p>Questions certified by Court of Appeals (Case No. 6188).</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1916-12-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 1950

5 state decisions

2019161920193019401950decided

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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Pee Curiam:

¶1“The Court of Appeals desires instructions upon the following questions:

¶2“1. In the trial of a case of seduction, was the following charge to the jury error because it tended to 'discredit in the minds of the jury the defense interposed by the prisoner that the woman he was charged with seducing was not a virtuous female, or because it contained an intimation by the court that the facts sought to be proved by the defendant constituted no lawful defense, but amounted only to an effort on his part to ‘blacken and blackball the character of his alleged victim;’ or was this language of the court calculated to raise in the minds of the jury such a prejudice against the defendant and his defense as to require the setting aside of the verdict of guilty: ‘ The proof of lascivious indulgences and wanton dalliances, with other evidence short of direct proof of the overt act, may authorize the jury to infer actual guilt of the illicit act; but it is not a lawful defense for the accused to blacken or blackball the character of his alleged victim by proving loose declarations or showing imprudent or immodest conduct on the part of the woman he is accused of seducing’?” The Court of Appeals is instructed that the excerpt from the charge quoted in the above question is erroneous for the reasons stated; but whether the error was cured or the evidence was such as to avoid the necessity of a new trial depends upon an entire review of the case, which can be done only by the Court of Appeals.

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