McCorkle v. State

• Decision Date: 18 January 1926
• Docket Number: 104
• Citation: 278 S.W. 965,170 Ark. 105
• Parties: MCCORKLE v. STATE
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

278 S.W. 965

170 Ark. 105

MCCORKLE v. STATE

No. 104

Supreme Court of Arkansas

January 18, 1926

Appeal from Hempstead Circuit Court; James H. McCollum, Judge reversed.

Judgment reversed.

J. O A. Bush, for appellant.

H. W Applegate, Attorney General, and Darden Moose, Assistant, for appellee.

OPINION

HART, J.

Harvey McCorkle prosecutes this appeal to reverse a judgment of conviction against him for the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses.

The indictment charges in substance that the defendant, Harvey McCorkle, falsely represented to T. J. Garner that he was the owner of a certain bale of cotton, and that said bale of cotton had no lien against it, and thereby induced Garner to pay him $ 100 for said cotton.

Dr. T. J. Garner was the principal witness for the State. According to his testimony, in the fall of 1920 he bought six bales of cotton from Harvey McCorkle and paid him $ 700 for them. The defendant sold the six bales of cotton to the witness in Hempstead County, Ark., as his cotton, and the witness knew nothing about a mortgage being on the cotton. The six bales of cotton were not sold at one time, but pretty close together along in the fall. The witness paid the defendant $ 100 for one of the bales of cotton. The defendant made no representations whatever about the cotton. There wasn't anything said, only the defendant just sold the cotton as his cotton, and the witness paid him for it.

Ralph Routen testified that his firm had a mortgage on the cotton which was sold by the defendant to Dr. T. J. Garner, and did not give the defendant authority to sell the cotton. The defendant did not pay the mortgage indebtedness. The cotton in question was raised by the defendant and his share-croppers on rented land.

According to the testimony of the defendant, some of his share-croppers quit him, and he sold the cotton for the purpose of hiring cotton pickers to gather the balance of his cotton crop.

The principles of law which we think are applicable to the facts of this case are laid down in Maxey v State, 85 Ark. 499, 108 S.W. 1135. In that case the indictment charged the defendant with the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses by falsely pretending that he had a designated sum of money on deposit in a certain bank. The proof was that the defendant presented a check to another bank and received credit for the amount thereof when he had no funds in the bank on which the...