Lundy v. State

• Decision Date: 18 September 1883
• Citation: 71 Ga. 360
• Parties: LUNDY v. THE STATE OF GEORGIA.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

71 Ga. 360

LUNDY v. THE STATE OF GEORGIA.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

September 18, 1883

September Term, 1883.

1.Where a burglary has been committed, and money, goods, or other property which was in the house at the time of the burglary is soon thereafter found in the possession of a person who is unable to account for his possession, it raises a presumption of his guilt, and the jury would be authorized to find a verdict of guilty.

2.The newly discovered evidence in this case is quite immaterial or as best negative testimony.

Criminal Law.New Trial.Before Judge BOWER.Mitchell Superior Court.March Term, 1883.

Reported in the decision.

C. C DAVIS; A. L. HAWES, by W. N. SPENCE, for plaintiff in error.

J. W WALTERS, solicitor general, for the state.

BLANDFORD Justice.

Ben Lundy was indicted in the superior court of Mitchell county for burglary, and found guilty; he made his motion for new trial, upon the ground that the verdict of the jury was contrary to the evidence, and upon the further ground of newly discovered evidence in this, that search had been made of the house of prisoner, and none of the property said to be missing from the house which had been burglarized could be found.The court below refused the new trial.

The evidence showed that the store-house of the prosecutor had been broken open on Christmas eve night, 1882, and money and other valuable things had been taken therefrom; that on the third day thereafter the clerk of prosecutor received in trade from prisoner a mutilated silver quarter of a dollar which the prosecutor identified as having been in the money drawer of the house...