Wells v. State

• Decision Date: 29 July 1895
• Citation: 22 S.E. 958,97 Ga. 209
• Parties: WELLS v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

22 S.E. 958

97 Ga. 209

WELLS v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Georgia

July 29, 1895

Syllabus by the Court.

1. Exceptions alleging error in overruling a motion to rule out evidence which had been admitted without objection will not be considered by this court unless it appears that some ground or reason for excluding such evidence was stated to and passed upon by the trial judge at the time the motion to rule out was made.

2. It does not affirmatively appear that the court erred in rejecting a letter offered in evidence (apparently admissible upon proper proof of its execution), addressed to the accused, and purporting to have been signed by a witness for the state, to whom the letter was exhibited while on the stand, and who testified positively that he did not sign it but was unable to state whether he had caused it to be written and sent to the accused or not; there being no other proof as to the execution of the letter, and it being strongly inferable from all the facts in evidence that this witness was illiterate, and that the contents of the letter were not made known to him. Nor was there any error in refusing to allow the accused to read this letter as a part of his statement to the jury.

3. The charge of the court, as a whole, was a clear and admirable presentation of the law applicable to the issues involved and it fully covered all the requests to charge, in so far as they were legal and pertinent.

4. The corpus delicti was not clearly and satisfactorily proved; and though the evidence relied upon by the state to connect the accused with the alleged offense, it being entirely circumstantial, was consistent with the guilt of the accused it was not inconsistent with every other reasonable hypothesis; nor was it, as a whole, sufficiently strong and conclusive to show his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

5. A new trial should have been granted on the merits.

Error from superior court, Monroe county; J. B. Williamson, pro hac Judge.

Alexander Wells was convicted of arson, and brings error. Reversed.

Grounds of objection to evidence not stated at the trial will not be considered by the reviewing court.

The following is the official report:

Wells was indicted for arson in burning "the church building of the Wright's Grove Baptist Church and the congregation worshipping there, and under the control of said Baptist Church and the deacon of said Baptist Church, one Peter Porch." He was found guilty, and, his motion for new trial being overruled, he excepted. The motion was upon the general grounds that the verdict was contrary to law evidence, etc. Also, because the court erred in refusing to rule out and withdraw from the jury, on motion of movant's counsel, the following entries in a World Almanac for 1893, introduced by the state for the purpose of showing the hour the moon rose on the night the arson was committed, to wit: "July, 1893. Sat. First. Moon rises and sets 9:25,"--alleged to be error because the solicitor general failed to prove that said almanac was a correct calendar, and gave the correct time as to the rising and the setting of the moon on the night the crime was said to have been committed, and the almanac did not contain the name of Georgia at all in its reckoning of the time of rising of the moon; further, because, under the law, the time of setting of the moon can only be shown by Stern's United States Calendar, without other proof to sustain it. Movant contends that said testimony was damaging to his case because the jury relied on it largely in connecting him with the crime, and the absence thereof would have resulted in his acquittal. As to this ground it appears that the almanac was tendered to defendant's attorney, and then admitted without objection. While the state's counsel was making the concluding argument, defendant's council moved to withdraw and rule out the almanac, which motion was overruled. Error in refusing to charge the following written request of movant: "The defendant insists, among other things, that he is not guilty, for the reason that he has proven an alibi; that is, when Wright's Grove Baptist Church was burned, that he was in another place, and therefore he could not and did not commit the crime with which he stands charged. On this issue I charge you that, under the law, before the defendant [can] avail himself of this defense, he must satisfy you that, at the time the burning occurred, it was a physical impossibility for him to have committed the crime, for the reason that he was at another place, and could not have been at the scene of the crime, at the time it was committed,"--alleged to be error because the evidence entitled him to have this principle of law submitted to the jury, as it was one of the defenses relied upon, and embodied the law; error, further, in not...