Donovan v. State

Alvey, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. There is but a single exception in this case, and that is to the ruling of the Court below in rejecting certain evidence offered on the part of the defence. And the question presented would appear to be an exceedingly plain one, and this Court can have no difficulty whatever in affirming the ruling of the Court below in rejecting the evidence offered. The case, as presented by the record, was simply this: The appellants, father and son, were indicted for receiving a barrel of whiskey, knowing it to have been stolen.

The proof appears to have been clear beyond all dispute that the whiskey had been stolen from the cellar of one Kirwan on the night of the 10th of March, 1885; but the defence seems to have rested mainly on the want of guilty knowledge by the traversers in the receipt of the whiskey. They both, when first accused, and until the whiskey was actually found, utterly denied that they had received the whiskey, or that they had any knowledge of it whatever; and it was not until a second search of the premises was made, under a search warrant, that the whiskey was found in an outhouse on the premises where the father lived, and upon which the son, William Donovan, carried .on the business of keeping a drinking saloon. When the whiskey was found the serial number of the barrel had been shaved off, and the revenue tax mark defaced. The shavings or clippings, however, were found in the outhouse where the whiskey was found, and the barrel fully identified.

The barrel was shown to contain 37 or 38 gallons' of whiskey, worth about four dollars per gallon. William Donovan, one of the traversers, became a witness on the part of the defence, and testified that he and his father had tasted the whiskey on the 9th of March, 1885,- from a bottle in the possession of Lawrence Preston, who said that he and his brother Wm. Preston had a barrel of the whiskey that they wanted to sell , a,nd that he, Willia ³⁶⁷ Donovan, agreed to give forty dollars for the barrel of whiskey; but that.no time was fixed for its delivery: That on the 10th of March, after dark, Lawrence Preston, to the surprise of the witness, delivered the barrel of whiskey in the