Jones v. State
| Decision Date | 12 April 1921 |
| Docket Number | 8 Div. 824 |
| Citation | 90 So. 135,18 Ala.App. 116 |
| Parties | JONES v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Franklin County; C.P. Almon, Judge.
Andrew Jones was convicted of owning a still, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.
W.L Chenault, of Russellville, for appellant.
Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., and Lamar Field, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The court charged the jury as follows:
There is no error in the above excerpt from the court's oral charge. However, it is the law that while circumstantial evidence is just as potent as positive evidence, every circumstance tending to connect the defendant with the crime must be connected with defendant. Newell v. State, 16 Ala.App. 77, 75 So. 625. The humane provision of the law is that upon circumstantial evidence there should not be a conviction unless to a moral certainty it excludes every other reasonable hypothesis than that of the guilt of the accused. No matter how strong may be the circumstances, if they can be reconciled with the theory that some other person may have done the act, then the guilt of the accused is not shown by that full measure of proof the law requires. Pickens v. State, 115 Ala. 42, 22 So. 551.
In the instant case the measure of proof falls far short of the rule above announced, and we are of the opinion after a careful examination of all the evidence the state failed to meet the burden of proof necessary to a conviction, and that the probabilities of innocence which attended this defendant throughout the trial of this case were entirely too numerous to permit the conviction to stand, for to hold otherwise it would be necessary to resort to surmise, suspicion, or conjecture. The mere fact that a still was found by the officers within 100 or 200 yards of the house rented by this defendant and occupied by him as a dwelling, and that a path with tracks in it led from the locality of the still through the cowpen and up towards defendant's house, without more, is, in the opinion of the court, insufficient to authorize the jury to reach the conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that the defendant was guilty of making or manufacturing the specified prohibited liquors. There was no testimony offered by the state to...
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