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68 Ga. 25

Ashton v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided September 15, 1881

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1881-09-15

Criminal Law. Burglary. Master and Servant. Laws. Before Judge Snead. Richmond Superior Court. April Term, 1881. Ashton was indicted for burglary. The indictment alleged that he broke into and entered a certain house, the property of Eliza W. Moore, and used as a dwelling-house by one Albert Maddox, with intent to steal certain goods belonging to one William H. Warren. The evidence was, in brief, as follows: The house belonged to Mrs. Moore, and was situated on a plantation.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1881-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently February 1981

6 state decisions

2018811890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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JacKSON, Chief Justice.

¶11. The defendant was’convicted of burglary ; he broke and entered a dwelling-house ; it must have been with the intent to steal, though he was caught before he committed the felony. The house belonged to Mrs. Moore, as charged in the indictment; it was used as a dwelling-house by Albert Maddox as charged, because he occupied one room of it generally,and had charge of it as foreman of the hands on the plantation. It made no difference that Wm. H. Warren, occasionally when visiting the plantation, lodged in one room, even if he were master, and Maddox servant, when he was there. It was more constantly used' by Maddox as a residence or domicile than by Warren. We see no material error in the ruling of the court on these points.

¶22. The act of 1879 (laws of 1879, Page 65) leaves the definition of burglary as it stood before in the Code. Its effect is simply to alter the law of burglary in respect to punishment, putting burglary in the day-time and at night on the same footing, and leaving it to the judge to punish either at his discretion within the extremes of the penalty prescribed — any term of time between the shortest and longest time prescribed.

¶3It leaves burglary a crime, whether the breaking and entering with felonious intent be made day or night.

¶4Judgment affirmed.

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