Allison v. State

• Decision Date: 09 May 1911
• Citation: 1 Ala.App. 206,55 So. 453
• Parties: ALLISON v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

55 So. 453

1 Ala.App. 206

ALLISON v. STATE.

Court of Appeals of Alabama

May 9, 1911

Rehearing Denied May 29, 1911.

Appeal from Criminal Court, Jefferson County; S. L. Weaver, Judge.

R. H Allison was convicted of having sold, offered for sale, kept for sale, or otherwise disposed of, intoxicating liquors contrary to the law, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Vassar L. Allen and John McQueen, for appellant.

Robert C. Brickell, Atty. Gen., for the State.

DE GRAFFENRIED, J.

"A collateral crime may be evidence against the defendant if it is connected with the crime under investigation and forms a part of a general and composite transaction. Where two or more crimes constitute parts of one transaction, so that to prove either necessitates proof of the other, or when the intent is to be proved from circumstances, or where the identity of the accused is in issue, or where several crimes are intermixed or blended with one another or connected so that they form an indivisible criminal transaction, and full proof by testimony, whether direct or circumstantial, of any one of them cannot be given without showing the others evidence of any or all of them is admissible against a defendant on trial for any offense which is itself a detail of the whole criminal scheme." Underhill on Criminal Evidence (2d Ed.) §§ 87, 88, 321.

Where several crimes constitute, in fact, one criminal transaction evidence of all of such crimes may be given as part of the res gestæ of the offense with which the defendant is charged in the indictment.

In the present case, the defendant was tried upon an affidavit, to which he pleaded not guilty, charging that the defendant "sold, offered for sale, kept for sale, or otherwise disposed of, spirituous, vinous, or malt liquors contrary to law; or sold, offered for sale, kept for sale, or otherwise disposed of, prohibited liquors and beverages contrary to law." In the affidavit he was charged, not with a single offense, but with many offenses of the same general character.

The evidence for the state tended to show that the defendant was the proprietor or one of the proprietors of a hotel in Birmingham, Ala., known as the Allison Hotel; that several raids were made upon the place under the orders of the sheriff, and on several occasions whisky and beer were found there; that on one of these raids several dozen bottles of beer were found in one of the rooms stored in an ice box, one full cask of beer and a partly filled cask of beer; that on the same occasion some whisky was taken from the building; that on one occasion the officers seized two trunks in the defendant's bedroom, which defendant admitted were filled with whisky, but whether this was on a separate raid or one of the raids above referred to is not clear. The evidence further tended to show that on one occasion a deputy, acting under the orders of the sheriff, had bought a bottle of beer from a negro in said hotel, and that, on another occasion, a deputy in charge of a searching party went into said hotel, and on the second floor of the hotel, in a room used as a dining room, saw a negro waiting upon the diners, and heard...