# Thomas v. State > Alabama Court of Appeals · June 30, 1917 · 16 Ala. App. 219 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9825406 ## Case - **Full name:** Thomas v. State. - **Court:** Alabama Court of Appeals - **Decided:** June 30, 1917 - **Citations:** 16 Ala. App. 219; 77 So. 57; 1917 Ala. App. LEXIS 268 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** On rehearing - **Judges:** Brown - **Cited by:** 4 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9825406 ## Opinion text On Rehearing. The cases cited as supporting the application for rehearing were considered in disposing of the ease, but we did not deem it necessary then to differentiate them from the case in hand. [5] The evidence in this case shows that Beckham turned his hogs into a swamp where people usually allowed their hogs to run during the fall; that he searched for the hogs and was unable to find them, and positively stated that no one had his authority to take them out of the swamp. The evidence further shows that after arming himself with a search warrant, Beckham searched several pldees, including the defendant’s house, and that when he proposed to search defendant’s house, defendant answered, saying, “Go ahead, that he had hogs in the swamp the same as I [Beckham] did.” Beckham then, leaving Powers in the house with the defendant, proceeded with the search, and found the parts of one or more freshly butcnered hogs, and among these parts was the head of a hog marked in Beckham’s mark. When Beckham carried this head into the room and confronted defendant with it, defendant jumped out of the house and ran away. We think the defendant’s conduct on this occasion and his statement that he had hogs in the swamp, in view of the fact that he anticipated that Beckham would find the freshly butchered meat, tends to show that he had taken the hogs, the meat of which was found in his possession, from the swamp, and when Beckham returned with the hog’s head bearing Beckham’s earmarks, prompted by a consciousness of guilt, he proceeded to flee. These facts and the legitimate inferences afforded thereby clearly differentiate this case from the cases relied upon by appellant. The nearest to an analogy is found in the case of Sanders v. State, 167 Ala. 85 , 52 South. 417 , 28 L. R. A. (N. S.) 536. In that case, the goods were alleged to have been stolen from the storehouse of one Horton, who testified that the goods had his mark on them, and identified them as 'goods from his store, but said that he could not swear that the goods in question were not sold by one of the eight persons in the store who had authority to sell such goods. It was also shown that the defendant undertook flight after the parties who found the goods in his possession threatened to tie him. In Jeffries’ Case, 7 Ala. App. 144 , 62 South. 270 : “The only support for the charge of larceny made against the defendant was evidence tending to prove his possession and sale of a cow .which had disappeared from a pasture from which cattle sometimes escape through broken places in the fence which inclosed it at a point where a brook ran under the fence. There was an entire absence of evidence having any tendency to prove how the cow got out of the possession of the owner or came into the possession of the defendant.” Jones v. State, 13 Ala. App. 10 , 68 South. 690 , was a prosecution for murder, and does not seem to have any application to the principles involved in this case. Orr v. State, 107 Ala. 35 , 18 South. 142 , and Bryant v. State, 116 Ala. 445 , 23 South. 40 , merely hold that the possession of stolen property must be both recent and unexplained to authorize an inference of guilt. We repeat that the statement of the defendant that he had hogs in the swamp, as well as Beckham, when considered* in connection with the fact that he knew that the meat would be found in his possession by Beckham, afforded an inference that he had taken this meat from the swamp, and when he was confronted with the head marked in Beckham’s mark, the consciousness of his guilt prompted him to take flight, and it was a question for the jury whether the evidence proved the corpus delicti. Application overruled. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9825406. Public record. Not legal advice.