Justice v. State

• Decision Date: 15 June 1909
• Docket Number: (No. 1,853.)
• Citation: 6 Ga. App. 330,64 S.E. 1004
• Parties: JUSTICE. v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

64 S.E. 1004

(6 Ga. App. 330)

JUSTICE.

v.STATE.

(No. 1, 853.)

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

June 15, 1909.

Homicide (§ 257*)—Criminal Law (§ 1165^*) — Assault with Intent to Kill — Evidence—Harmless Error.

The evidence authorized the verdict. No error of law so serious as to require a reversal appears in the record.

[Ed. Note.—For other cases, see Homicide, Dec. Dig. § 257;* Criminal Law, Cent. Dig. § 3088; Dec. Dig. § 1165.*]

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from Superior Court, Floyd County; Moses Wright, Judge.

William Justice was convicted of shooting at another, and brings error. Affirmed.

M. B. Eubanks, for plaintiff in error.

J. W. Bale, Sol. Gen., and C. H. Porter, for the State.

POWELL, J. The defendant, William Justice, commonly known as "Coot" Justice, was indicted for assault with intent to murder, and convicted of the statutory offense of "shooting at another." According to the case made by the state he had been to a "candy pulling" over at Mr. Locklear's on a moonshiny night in October, 1907. Miss Hot-brooks, the prosecutrix, was also there. So were her brother, Ira, and a young man named Davis. Justice left the candy pulling first. Miss Holbrooks, her brother, and Davis came along a little later. As they got across the creek, they heard a fuss behind them, and the young lady said, "Here comes Coot." As Ira and Davis looked around they recognized him. He ran down the creek in the direction Holbrooks and his sister had to go, and waited near Mr. Burk's barn. Here Miss Holbrooks saw him, and recognized him again, just as he was in the act of shooting. Just at this instant some one (Miss Holbrooks swore positively that it was the defendant) fired into the party with a repeating shotgun loaded with large bird shot. He fired several times in rapid succession. He put 40 or 50 shot into Miss Holbrooks' back, scattered all the way from her head to her heels. Her brother Ira received a similar load; and the Davis boy was not wholly slighted, for he, too, had some shot in his back. The next day Dr. Wicker picked the shot out of Miss Holbrooks' back, etc.; but he left a few in her. It further appears from the record that the young lady exhibited some of the shot to the jury. The defendant's testimony, if true, made out an alibi. Miss Holbrooks, among other things, testified as follows: "I heard the defendant, William Justice, say, 'I will kill every God damn Holbrooks by name.' When he said this he was in my father's house at home. He said this about a month before the shooting, I suppose."

The first ground of the amended motion for a new trial complains that "the court refused to allow the defendant to show by the witness Mollie Holbrooks that, on the same day that she testified that the. defendant threatened to kill the whole Holbrooks family, her father was drunk that night, and that defendant, instead of trying to kill him, carried him out of Rome that night to keep him from being locked up." The exception just mentioned is the only one of the several assigned that smacks of error. The others belong to that class denominated by Justice Samuel Lumpkin in one...