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26 Ala. App. 370

160 So 266

Davis v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided March 19, 1935

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1935-03-19

Relies on Sarasota Business Properties, Inc. v. Sarasota Bay Hotel Co. · 22 Ala. App. 375 - Dickey v. State · 25 Ala. App. 334 - Wallace v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1935-03-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 1973

5 state decisions

2019351940195019601970decided

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, Judge.

¶1 The law ought to be consistent. We have reaffirmed our holding in Dickey v. State, 22 Ala. App. 375, 115 So. 848, more than once. See Shepard’s Alabama Citations.

¶2 There, we held that a conviction such as the instant one could not be sustained upon mere proof of the accused’s presence at a still, etc., not on his premises, and that he was seen to catch some of the whisky being manufactured in a bottle, taste it, and run away upon the approach of the officers.

¶3 Here, the only way the state would have us sustain the conviction is by testimony tending to show that appellant was present at a still, etc., on premises not his own, and that he carried a rock, or carried some rocks, and deposited it or them near the still. What the rocks were to be used for does not appear, except by pure speculation.

¶4 We can easily imagine that this old man (shown to be seventy) is guilty. But the evidence, as we read it, and as we have held in numerous cases, was not sufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury. See Wallace v. State, 25 Ala. App. 334, 145 So. 583, and Dickey v. State, supra.

¶5 For the error in overruling appellant’s motion to set aside the verdict of the jury, and the judgment entered thereon, the said judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.

¶6 Reversed and remanded.

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