Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 09 October 1912
• Docket Number: (No. 4,275.)
• Citation: 11 Ga.App. 662,75 S.E. 988
• Parties: WILLIAMS . v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

75 S.E. 988

(11 Ga.App. 662)

WILLIAMS .

v.STATE.

(No. 4, 275.)

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

Oct. 9, 1912.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Criminal Law (§ 562^*)—Evidence—Weight and Sufficiency.

Hearsay statements, even where admissible as part of the res gestæ, are not sufficient to convict, unless there is a principal fact established by other evidence. Applying this principle to the facts of the present case, the conviction of the accused was unauthorized, and his motion for a new trial should have been granted.

[Ed. Note.—For other cases, see Criminal Law, Cent. Dig. § 1263; Dec. Dig. § 562.*]

Error from Superior Court, Colquitt County; W. E. Thomas, Judge.

C. H. Williams was convicted of assault and battery, and brings error. Reversed.

The plaintiff in error was convicted of assault and battery. His motion for a new trial, based upon the general grounds and others, was overruled, and he excepted. The evidence for the state was in substance as follows: The accused, a carpenter, was working on a fence in front of a dwelling house, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when the mother of three small children living there left the house to find her husband. In a few minutes she and her husband returned together, and found the accused in one of the rooms of the house. The husband asked him what he was doing there, and he replied that he had come for a drink of water, and was tired, and was sitting down to rest. There was no water in the room; but the water was on the back veranda, on the shelf. Immediately after the mother had come into the house, one of the children—a girl five years old—ran to her from the room in which the accused was found. The mother testified: "My little girl came running to me. Her eyes were all bleared, and she was trembling and white. The child said: 'Mamma, are you going to whip me? I couldn't help it; it was him.' I said: 'Who?' I said: 'What?' And she up and told the circumstances." The child said that the accused took her hands, and made her place them upon his private parts, which he had exposed, and that, on hearing the parents coming, he shoved her out of the door.

W. A. Covington and Jas. Humphreys, both of Moultrie, for plaintiff in error.

J. A. Wilkes, Sol. Gen., of Moultrie, for the State.

POTTLE, J. The court thinks that the evidence was insufficient to authorize the verdict. One cannot be convicted of crime upon mere hearsay testimony as to the sayings of a child, incompetent as a witness, because too young to appreciate the nature and sanctity of an oath. "Declarations are not competent as part of the res gestæ, un less there is a principal fact established by other evidence."...