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21 Ala. App. 181

106 So 390

Mathews v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided November 24, 1925

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1925-11-24

Relies on 20 Ala. App. 505 - Anderson v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1925-11-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently February 1972

7 state decisions

30192519301940195019601970decided

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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RICE, J.

¶1 Appellant was convicted of the offense of violating the prohibition laws by having certain liquor in his possession. .It would be of no value to discuss the evidence. It was largely, if not entirely, of a circumstantial nature. The question of whether or not it was sufficient to support the verdict returned is not presented, inasmuch as no motion to set aside the verdict was made. There was no error in refusing to give the requested general affirmative charge in appellant’s favor.

¶2 This court, speaking through Associate Judge Samford, has recently .said:

“However, we are of the opinion that the court erred in permitting the deputy sheriff to testify as to the smell of the tub. In 'the instant case the witness did not qualify as a ‘smeller,’ i. e., he is not shown to have known the smell of beer, or, if beer, what kind of beer. The sense of smell is a perfectly legitimate manner of obtaining information from which to testify, but such testimony must be carefully safeguarded by legal rules.” Anderson et al. v. State, 20 Ala. App. 505, 103 So. 305.

¶3 A .number of rulings of the trial court, in this case, were not in accord with the above, and were erroneous, and for these errors the judgment will be reversed and the cause remanded. Other questions presented will perhaps not arise on another trial.

¶4 Reversed and remanded.

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