Wortham v. State
| Decision Date | 16 March 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 61444,61444 |
| Citation | 158 Ga.App. 19,279 S.E.2d 287 |
| Parties | WORTHAM v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Franklin D. Rozier, Jr., Blackshear, for appellant.
C. Dean Strickland, Dist. Atty., W. Fletcher Sams, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
Defendant was indicted, tried and convicted of the offense of burglary. Defendant appeals. Held :
1. The state's evidence shows that on the night of December 1, 1979, a veterinary office in Blackshear, Pierce County, Georgia, was broken into and entered without authority by a person or persons unknown. A number of glass vials containing liquid anesthetics and sedatives (drugs) normally used for animals were taken. The vials taken from the veterinary office were recovered in Jesup, Wayne County, Georgia, on the morning of December 2, 1979, at about 10:30 a. m., when a police officer investigating a vehicle parked partially on the road and partially off the road found the defendant and another "passed out" in the front seat of the car. The defendant was found sitting on the passenger side of the automobile "passed out with his head laying (sic) on the driver's legs and between his legs was a bottle of drugs." Underneath the defendant was a brown paper bag with several bottles of drugs in it. Also found in the car were several syringes lying on the front seat with what appeared to the officer to be blood on them. The defendant's arm, as well as the driver's, had blood on it. The blood on the defendant's left arm was "in his elbow area, kind of down the forearm," and it appeared to the officer that the defendant had taken an injection.
Defendant testified that he had been drinking heavily on the evening of December 1, 1979, at a restaurant and disco, so that due to intoxication he had no memory of the interval of time between his being at the restaurant and disco and his awakening in the Wayne County jail. The driver and owner of the vehicle in which defendant was found entered a plea of guilty of burglary of the veterinary clinic in question and testified, during defendant's pre-sentence hearing only, that defendant had no involvement in the burglary, was passed out in the back seat of his car during the burglary and did not use any of the drugs taken in the burglary.
The state's evidence shows that a burglary of the veterinary office had recently occurred, and the vials discovered by law enforcement officers in the vehicle in which the defendant had been found unconscious had been stolen from the veterinary clinic. The defendant's possession of the stolen vials of drugs was proven by the presence of one of the vials in plain view between defendant's legs, suggesting that defendant had injected himself with some quantity of the drugs. See in this regard Smith v. State, 152 Ga.App. 134, 136(3), 262 S.E.2d 166.
No further circumstances or direct proof showing defendant committed the burglary is necessary for conviction. Selph v. State, 142 Ga.App. 26, 29, 234 S.E.2d 831. We expressly reject defendant's suggestion that we revive Bennett v. State, 136 Ga.App. 806, 222 S.E.2d 207, the reasoning of which we disapproved in Selph v. State, 142 Ga.App. 26, 243 S.E.2d 831, supra. After careful review of the entire record and transcript we find that a rational trier of fact (the jury in the case sub judice) could reasonably have found from the evidence adduced at trial proof of guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt of the offense of burglary. Driggers v. State, 244 Ga. 160, 161(1), 259 S.E.2d 133; ...
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...Furthermore, identification of a material or substance may be made by other than expert testimony. See, e.g., Wortham v. State, 158 Ga.App. 19, 20(2), 279 S.E.2d 287 (1981). But that is not even at issue because the detective was not rendering his opinion as an expert, see OCGA § 24-9-67, o......
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