State v. Bennett

• Decision Date: 04 June 1929
• Docket Number: No. 29535.,29535.
• Parties: STATE v. BENNETT et al.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

18 S.W.2d 52

STATE v. BENNETT et al.

No. 29535.

Supreme Court of Missouri. Division No. 2.

June 4, 1929.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Johnson County; Ewing Cockrell, Judge.

Charles Bennett and another were convicted of transporting corn whisky, and defendant named appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Aber & Jones, of Warrensburg, for appellant.

Stratton Shartel, Atty. Gen., and A. M. Meyer, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

BLAIR, P. J.

Appellant and one Junius Ritchie were jointly charged with the felony of transporting corn whisky, in violation of section 21, Laws of 1923, p. 242. Both were found guilty. The jury assessed appellant's punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for three years. After unsuccessfully moving for a new trial, he was sentenced on the verdict and thereafter granted an appeal. Defendant Ritchie, apparently satisfied to get off with the jail sentence imposed upon him, did not appeal.

We quote from respondent's statement, as follows:

"The state's evidence tended to show that on the evening of December 30, 1927, the defendants, Bennett and Ritchie, both negroes, resident in Warrensburg, left that city in a Ford coupe and the sheriff, Mason M. Lane with Harry Lane, his deputy, acting on information, went to a filling station at `Centerview corner' in Johnson County to await their return. The sheriff waited from 7:00 o'clock until after midnight. A street light of some sort was available at this point and it was flashed into approaching cars which appeared to answer the description of that of defendants. A little before 1:00 o'clock the defendants appeared driving towards Warrensburg. One was `a light colored boy with a little moustache and one real dark fellow.' The sheriff and his deputy started in pursuit, down hill toward a culvert. At a distance of about seventy-five feet from the culvert and perhaps `half a quarter' from the filling station defendants' car slowed down to a speed of five or ten miles per hour and one of the defendants was seen to step off the slowly moving car and into the ditch carrying something which he stooped and set down and then circled back to the pavement catching the Ford coupe and re-entering it. The sheriff's car soon overtook the defendants' car and crowded the latter off of the pavement. The officers then told defendants to drive on towards Warransburg and the former returned to the point where a man had alighted from the fugitive car and discovered a five-gallon glass jug of whisky sitting in the mud at the bottom of the ditch. The...