Worley v. State
| Decision Date | 17 March 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 35592,No. 2,35592,2 |
| Citation | 86 S.E.2d 702,91 Ga.App. 663 |
| Parties | James WORLEY v. The STATE |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Brannon & Brannon, Gainesville, for plaintiff in error.
Jeff C. Wayne, Sol. Gen., Sidney O. Smith, Jr., Gainesville, for defendant in error.
Syllabus Opinion by the Court
1. In criminal cases the corpus delicti, the identity of the stolen property, and the accused's connection with the commission of the crime, may all be established by circumstantial evidence where such evidence is sufficient to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused, Wiggins v. State, 80 Ga.App. 213, 55 S.E.2d 821; Edwards v. State, 24 Ga.App. 653, 101 S.E. 766; McCrary v. State, 20 Ga.App. 194, 92 S.E. 954; and while no one of the circumstances of a case may be sufficient to prove the guilt of the accused, yet all of them taken together may authorize the jury to infer that the accused is guilty as charged. Rogers v. State, 80 Ga.App. 585, 587, 56 S.E.2d 633.
2. Under an application of the rules of law stated in division 1 to the facts of the present case, the jury was authorized to find the defendant guilty of the larceny of the chickens described in the indictment, and the trial court did not err in denying the motion for a new trial, which was based solely on the general grounds. The facts and circumstances from which the jury was authorized to infer the defendant's guilt are these: that, on the day of the alleged larceny of the chickens, an automobile fitting the description of one owned by the defendant was seen before dawn to drive way from the prosecutor's chicken house with two or three coops of chickens in the trunk of the automobile; that this automobile and the defendant's automobile were of the same model and that the automobile which was seen and the defendant's automobile, although the defendant is a resident of Georgia, bore South Carolina license tags; that chickens exactly fitting the description of those stolen from the prosecutor were found in coops in the defendant's automobile; that one of two brothers, who were jointly indicted with the defendant and who had spent part of the day and all of the night prior to the day of the alleged larceny at the defendant's home or in the defendant's company, was in possession of the automobile; that the defendant and the two brothers loaded some chicken coops in the defendant's car at the defendant's house about midnight for...
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