Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

86 Ala. 66

Diffey v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1888

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1888-12-15

From the Criminal Court of Jefferson. Tried before tbe Hon. Sam. ■ E. Greene.

Relies on State v. . McManus · Cunningham v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 2019

1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

2018881890190019101920193019401950196019701980199020002010decided

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 →

CLOPTON, J.

¶1The evidence on which the defendant was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon was, that he had a pistol concealed in a hand-basket, which he carried m his hand, or on his arm, from his residence to a station on the street railway, a distance of three or four hundred yards, and when he entered the car, he put the basket on the seat beside him. The language of the statute is, “carries concealed about his person,” In Cunningham v, *67State, 76 Ala. 88, where it was held that a person did not commit the offense who had a pistol in his saddle-bags, while riding on horseback along the public road, about the person was defined to mean, “that it is so connected with the person, as that the locomotion of the accused will carry the deadly weapon with him.” The purpose of the statute is to interdict carrying a weapon in a manner so connected with the person, that it may be easily and promptly used, and yet others not discover its presence. About the person does not mean necessarily on the person. All the essential elements of the offense exist, if an interdicted weapon is carried near the person, and so connected therewith that the locomotion of the body necessarily carries the weapon, and so that it may be promptly used when desired; as in the pocket of an overcoat Carried on the' arm, or in a hand-basket, or other receptacle, held by the hand. . Such carrying one of the forbidden weapons concealed, comes within the letter and purview of the statute, and constitutes the offense denounced. State v. McManus, 89 N. C. 555.

¶2Affirmed.

/86/ala/66 · .json · Public domain