Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

37 Ala. 472

Smith v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided June 15, 1861

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1861-06-15

From the Circuit', Court of- Choctaw. Tried before tbe. Hon. A. A. ColemaN. . ÍN this case, George Frank Smith, Marcellus A. Coleman, M. Van-Camp and Charles.

Relies on Swallow v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1861-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently May 1895

3 state decisions

101861187018801890decided

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 →

A. J. WALTER, C. J.

¶1The witness only participated in the playing by aiding an unskillful player with his advice, and at. one time doing some little acts, during a brief absence of such unskillful player, in., his place. These acts were not of such character as.- neces&irily to constitute the witness an accomplice,, when he was noti engaged in the performance of therm During a part of the playing, the witness was engaged in reading. While he was so engaged,..it cannot be affirmed, as a legal *474conclusion, that he was either assisting in the game, or participating in it. The offense may have been complete, by what was done during the time occupied by the witness in reading. — Swallow v. The State, 20 Ala. 30 ; Cannon v. State, 15 ib. 383; Coggins v. State, 7 Porter, 263. The court was, therefore, not authorized to assume conclusively, that the witness 'was an accomplice at -all the points of time when enough was done -to authorize a conviction. This the court was, in the first charge asked, requested to do; or, at least, that was the effect of the charge. There was,-therefore, no error in the-refusaL

¶2[2.] There was no -error in the ¡¡refusal of '¿the second ‘■charge requested.

¶3Affirmed.

/37/ala/472 · .json · Public domain