Lewis v. Commonwealth
Lewis v. Commonwealth
Opinion of the Court
Opinion of the Court by
Affirming.
Appellant was convicted in this case of illegally selling three pints of whiskey to Alfred Bayne.
The first ground assigned for reversal of the judgment is that there was no proof the sale occurred in Edmonson county, and that as a consequence his motion for a directed acquittal was improperly overruled.
■Counsel are clearly in error in this contention, since two witnesses, after describing what occurred, were asked if the transaction 'described occurred in Edmonson county, and both answered in the 'affirmative. It is perfectly clear that both the questions and answers referred to' the entire transaction detailed, and not simply to the concluding part thereof, as counsel assume.
The only other error alleged is that a plea in bar was improperly overruled.
Appellant was separately indicted, tried, and convicted — upon practically the same evidence as above detailed — for a sale to Wolf, and that conviction was pleaded in bar of this action.
In support of this contention, it is insisted that there were not two separate sales, one to Wolf and the other to Payne, but that the entire transaction constituted only a single sale of five pints of whiskey to Wolf and Payné jointly, and that, as a consequence, defendant’s former conviction was a bar to the prosecution of this, action.
We are clearly of the opinion, however, that the evidence is not susceptible of this construction, but discloses-rather two separate and distinct sales. Hence a conviction for one is not a bar to the other, and the trial court, did not err in so holding.
The fact that the evidence was practically the same upon both trials is not controlling, or even material, since the two separate sales were negotiated simultaneously,, and it would have been quite, difficult, if not impossible,, to produce separately that which applied alone to either.. Besides there was no effort upon the part of defendant to-have excluded that part of the evidence not directly in point, since he was claiming then, as he does now, that there was but one sale as shown by all of the evidence.
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.