Bines v. State

CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
Citation118 Ga. 320,45 S.E. 376
PartiesBINES. v. STATE.
Decision Date11 August 1903

45 S.E. 376
118 Ga. 320

BINES.
v.
STATE.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Aug. 11, 1903.


CRIMINAL LAW—CORPUS DELICTI.

1. Before a person charged with a particular crime can be lawfully found guilty thereof, it is necessary to establish the corpus delicti. This cannot be done by the mere extrajudicial confession of the accused. There must be aliunde proof of the corpus delicti.

v 1. See Criminal Law, vol. 14, Cent. Dig. §§ 1225, 1226.

2. In a criminal trial, evidence that the accused, while confined in prison, upon being interrogated as to his conduct upon a certain occasion, stated that he had intended to attempt to overpower the jailer and effect his escape, is admissible as a circumstance against him.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from Superior Court, Effingham County; B. D. Evans, Judge.

Higman Bines was convicted of arson, and brings error. Reversed.

J. H. Smith, for plaintiff in error.

Livingston Kenan, Sol. Gen., for the State.

FISH, P. J. The plaintiff in error was found guilty of the crime of arson, and, upon his motion for a new trial being overruled, he excepted. The motion for a new trial was based upon the general grounds, upon alleged newly discovered evidence, and alleged error in overruling a motion to rule out certain evidence introduced by the state. Briefly stated, the evidence upon which the accused was found guilty was substantially as follows: The barn which he was charged to have feloniously burned was in the town of Marlow, belonged to J. F. McEachern, contained corn, hay, fodder, cotton seed hulls, and rice flour, and was discovered to be on fire shortly before or shortly after midnight. At the time of the fire, and for a considerable period of time before, the accused was in the employment of the owner of the barn, working as a general helper around the owner's home and little farm, and feeding his horse and cattle. The keys to the barn had been kept hanging in the hall of McEach-ern's residence, and the accused generally had bad free access to them, and carried them to and from the barn; but a short time before the fire occurred McEachern had moved to Jacksonville, and left these keys in charge of Mr. Yandall, a boarder, who was living in the residence, and he had carried them from then until the fire, in order to see that the barn was always locked and nothing taken from it. After Yandall took the keys and saw to the feeding of the stock, the accused seemed to Yandall, from his appearance and demeanor, to be mad. The accused lived, according to some of the witnesses, about a quarter of a mile from the barn, and according to others about half a mile therefrom. When the fire was discovered, an alarm was raised, a gun being fired several times, and there being a good deal of hallooing. The accused did not come to the fire that night, but made his appearance at the scene the next morning, and assisted in putting out the smoldering embers. Upon being then asked why he did not come to the fire, he said he never gave it a thought. Several other people lived in the same immediate neighborhood as the accused, and none of them came to the fire. The accused and a number of others, on the night of the fire, attended meeting at a church about half a mile below Marlow, and the people left the church after the 10 o'clock train had passed, and the defendant, in company with some of his neighbors, went in the direction of his home. One of the state's witnesses testified that he lived within 100 feet of the defendant's house, and that after he left the church he went to his home, and went to sleep, and did not wake up until the next morning. A witness named Anna Duncan testified that she lived right across the street from the house of the accused; that on the night of the fire she went to bed after she got through her work, and some time in the night her son came and awakened her, and she let him in the house; that in a few minutes after her son came in and went to bed she heard the accused rattling a chain against the door, and, after the chain rattled, she heard a small whistle, which she thought ought to be the defendant's whistle; that she recognized his whistle, for she knew "he has that low whistle ever since his mother has...

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