Byrd v. The State Of Ga.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1882
• Citation: 68 Ga. 661
• Parties: Byrd. vs. The State of Georgia.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

68 Ga. 661

Byrd. vs. The State of Georgia.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

FEBRUARY TERM, 1882.

Criminal Law. Confessions. Accomplice. Evidence. Before Judge Harris. Campbell Superior Court. August Term, 1881.

Reported in the decision.

T. W. & George Latham; Roan & Rosser, for plaintiff in error.

H. M. REID, solicitor general, for the state.

Speer, Justice.

Byrd was charged with the offence of larceny from the house. On a trial he was found guilty by the jury. A motion for new trial was made, which was overruled, and he excepted. The grounds of the motion were:

(1.) The admission in evidence of certain acts and conduct of one Tom Betts, who was charged as an accomplice and principal in said offence.

(2.) The admission in evidence of certain confessions of Byrd, the accused, given in under the circumstances detailed in the record.

(3.) Exceptions to certain portions of the charge of the court as given to the jury on the trial.

1. Betts and the accused were charged as accomplices in this offence. Betts, as the principal, and the accused as aiding and abetting. The evidence in the record shows them together at the place and time when the alleged larceny was said to have been committed; that they were in the store and near the place where the meat alleged to have been stolen was located that Betts was seen to leave the store with a sack and something in it, and placed it in a wagon in which both he and the accused, with others, returned home after night; that this occurred on Saturday evening, and on Monday morning when officers with a search warrant were approaching the houses of defendants, that Betts was seen to leave his house and go around with something under his arm wrapped in a cloth.

Prima facie under this proof, and during the pendency of the wrongful act, not only in its perpetration but in the effort at concealment, the act and conduct of one accomplice is admissible against the other, as are also his sayings pending the common criminal enterprise. They go to establish his guilt and if the other is shown to have aided and abetted the offence, they are evidence of his guilt, for the act of one is the act of both when the common criminal intent is established. Hopkins' Code, 536.

2-3. Were the admissions or confessions of the accused admissible under the circumstances as shown in the record? William Johnson, by whom these confessions were proved, was the proprietor of the place on which the accused and Betts lived, and they were in his employment. Johnson testified that on the morning the officers were there to look for the stolen meat, " he heard a noise near his back door, that he went out and found William Jackson (the prosecutor) and a bailiff talking to the defendants They were talking about the meat which Jackson claimed was stolen from him the Saturday evening before, and accused defendants of it, but they denied it; that Jackson and the bailiff then left, but the bailiff returned with a search warrant and searched the premises of defendant and foundnothing; that he (witness) then had a talk with Betts, the accused, and told him " it would be best for them to bring up the meat, that if the...