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63 Ga. 90

Smith v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided February 15, 1879

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1879-02-15

<p>Where the evidence is circumstantial, and not plainly insufficient, the verdict should stand. Weighing the evidence and finding the truth in an obscure or doubtful case, is work that can usually be well done, best clone, by a jury of the vicinage.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-02-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 1985

5 state decisions

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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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Bleckley, Justice.

¶1That there is some degree of doubt and obscurity as to who was the perpetrator of this homicide is not to be denied. It is a case on which earnest, thoughtful minds, honestly seeking after truth, might differ. The evidence is not plainly insufficient to sustain the verdict, and being circumstantial, it was, under the law, for the reasoning powers of a jury, rather than for those of a reviewing court, to work out the conclusion. The weighing of such evidence, especially where it is conflicting, and some of it of doubtful credibility, can be best done by a jury of the vicinage; and what they promulgate by their verdict as the value of the whole, and as the ultimate truth of the matter in controversy, ought to be accepted. No error of the presiding judge in the course of the trial is complained of. Only the *93inference of the jury from the various proven facts is impeached ; and thus we are brought face to face with the solitary question whether we shall overthrow the verdict or sustain it. We do the latter.

¶2Judgment affirmed.

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