Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 19 September 1914
• Docket Number: (No. 5718.)
• Citation: 15 Ga.App. 311,82 S.E. 817
• Parties: WILLIAMS . v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

82 S.E. 817

(15 Ga.App. 311)

WILLIAMS .

v.STATE.

(No. 5718.)

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

Sept. 19, 1914.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from City Court of Waycross; Jno. C. McDonald, Judge.

Melvin Williams was convicted of carrying a pistol without a license, and brings error. Affirmed.

Parker & Walker, of Waycross, for plaintiff in error.

A. B. Spence, Sol., and Crawley, Redding & Crawley, all of Waycross, for the State.

RUSSELL, C. J. The defendant was indicted for the offense of carrying a pistol without having obtained the license required by law. His guilt was abundantly shown by the evidence for the prosecution, but if he had denied, in his statement at the trial, the possession of the pistol (although he admitted that he had not obtained a license to carry a pistol), we would reverse the judgment of the trial judge refusing the grant of a new trial. Furthermore, if it had appeared, from the defendant's statement at the trial that he procured the pistol in the imminence of pressing danger, to defend himself against a deadly or felonious assault, we would be obliged to grant a new trial, not only because of the reasonableness of his use of the pistol, but also because no time to obtain a license for the legal possession of the pistol had intervened. The law does not expect the performance of impossibilities. If the case had been similar in its facts to that of Harris v. State, 80 S. E. 695, the judgment of the trial court would necessarily have to be reversed. The defendant in error evidently attempted to place his defense upon the principles controlling that case, and it is cited and relied upon by his counsel. However, from the statement of the defendant in the present case, a marked difference in the two cases is readily apparent. In that case the husband, suspecting his wife, went in search of her and ascertained that she was in a nearby house with her suspected paramour. His suspicions were verified by his failure to obtain admission into the house, where the circumstances were sufficient to convince any one that his wife and the man in question were alone together in a room, the door of which was fastened. The husband ran back a very short distance to one of the neighboring houses. Under the pressing exigency of the situation, he borrowed a pistol and ran back to the room where his wifewas about to commit adultery or was in the act, and used the pistol, as he had the right to do, in preventing the adulterous intercourse. In that case we held that in the reasonable contemplation of the law, there was no time for Harris to get the license. The offense would have been complete before he could get the license, and the use of the pistol in resentment of the accomplished offense would not be justified. In the present case it appears from the defendant's statement that he had for some time suspected the criminal intimacy between his wife and one Will Dugger, and had reproached Will Dugger for attentions to her. In one of these conversations, it is true, Will Dugger said that he was not afraid of the defendant, and that he knew a woman of the street when he saw one, though he denied that he had ever had intercourse with the defendant's wife. Suspecting future intimacy between his wife and Dugger, according to his own statement, the defendant got the pistol and put it in his pocket the day before the transaction which is the basis of the defense in this case. He carried the pistol in his pocket, not only on the streets, but to a dance which he attended prior to the difficulty. He says that he had the pistol and used it because he saw his wife and Will Dugger "hugged up" over a bridge railing, but he himself states that...