Opinion
33506.
DECIDED APRIL 13, 1951. REHEARING DENIED MAY 8, 1951.
Maintaining lottery; from Clarke Superior Court — Judge West. January 20, 1951.
Tom Lee Horne Jr., for plaintiff in error.
D. M. Pollock, Solicitor-General, contra.
The venue was sufficiently established by the evidence, which also supported the verdict of guilty, and having the approval of the trial court it will not be disturbed by this court.
DECIDED APRIL 13, 1951. REHEARING DENIED MAY 8, 1951.
Sarah Flanigan was indicted, tried and convicted in the Superior Court of Clarke County on the charge that she did "keep, maintain, employ and carry on a lottery . . known and designated as the numbers game." The evidence of two police officers testifying on behalf of the State was to the effect that they went to the defendant's home on the morning of September 14, 1950; that the defendant admitted them; that they searched the bed in which the defendant's husband was lying and found lottery tickets inside a leg of the pajamas which he was wearing; that they were about to arrest both suspects when Sarah stated that the tickets were hers and her husband had nothing to do with them. The tickets were introduced in evidence along with a signed statement in the defendant's handwriting as follows: "I, Sarah Flanigan, went to bed in my home 1185 W. Broad St. Wed. night, September 13th with the lottery tickets in my had that I had wrote for different ones. About seven o'clock Thurs. morning Mr. McKinnon and Mr. Hardy came to my house and knocked on the door before I got out of the bed I put the tickets over between my husband's legs, Marvin Flanigan. The officers searched the bed and found the tickets. Marvin my husband had nothing to do with the tickets. I wrote them myself. Sarah G. Flanigan."
There was detailed testimony as to the method of operating the numbers game. Detective Hardy testified that the defendant told him she had just started the bug business; that she hadn't been at it long, not over two weeks. He further testified: "I know there is a lottery in Clarke County because we have had them to plead guilty here in the superior court for operating a lottery." There was also testimony that the defendant's home, where the tickets were recovered, was in Clarke County.
The defendant's motion for a new trial was overruled, and the exception is to this judgment.
The special ground of the amended motion for a new trial to the effect that there was no proof of the operation of a lottery in Clarke County, Georgia, at the time charged in the indictment seeks to attack the proof of venue, and is considered in connection with the general grounds. Where, as in this case, no conflict in the evidence as to venue appears, slight evidence is sufficient. Baker v. State, 55 Ga. App. 159 (1) ( 189 S.E. 364); Towler v. State, 24 Ga. App. 167 (3) ( 100 S.E. 42). In Brown v. State, 72 Ga. App. 61 ( 33 S.E.2d 44), it was held as follows: "The evidence showing that the defendant, in Fulton County, Georgia, had in her place of residence possession of the lottery tickets and other incriminatory articles, it will be presumed, nothing to the contrary appearing, that the venue of the case was in that county."
The description of the method of conducting the numbers game, the defendant's statement that she had written the tickets in question and that she had only been in the business about two weeks, together with the statement of the police officer that a numbers game was conducted in Clarke County and that he had received pleas of guilty from other persons in said county, and the proof that the tickets were in the defendant's possession in that county, were sufficient to prove the venue of the crime, nothing appearing to the contrary.
The above facts, taken in connection with the written statement of the defendant, were sufficient to authorize the verdict of guilty, and the trial court did not err in overruling the motion for a new trial as amended.
Judgment affirmed. MacIntyre, P.J., and Gardner, J., concur.