Opinion
49421.
SUBMITTED MAY 30, 1974.
DECIDED JUNE 20, 1974.
Abandonment. Ware State Court. Before Judge Smith.
Boatright Boatright, J. Laddie Boatright, for appellant.
Delman L. Minchew, Solicitor, for appellee.
1. Ga. L. 1973, pp. 697, 700, provides that in prosecutions for abandonment of illegitimate children under Code § 74-9902, "the venue of the offense shall be in the county in which the child and the mother are domiciled at the time of the swearing out of the arrest warrant..." No effective date is specified in the Act of 1973; and since it was approved on April 13, 1973, it became effective on July 1, 1973. Code Ann. § 102-111. The instant warrant was sworn out on May 10, 1973, prior to the effective date of the Act, and the venue provisions quoted above are accordingly not applicable here.
2. The evidence in the record before us reveals that appellant, the illegitimate child and its mother were living together in a mobile home in a county other than Ware County. Appellant deserted the child and the mother leaving them without food, etc., in the mobile home, where the condition of dependency upon others first arose. Consequently even though the mother and child may have subsequently arranged to move from the mobile home to Ware County, the offense of abandonment of the child had already been completed and the case was improperly tried in the State Court of Ware County, which was without venue of the prosecution. York v. State, 52 Ga. App. 11 ( 181 S.E. 870); Beasley v. State, 54 Ga. App. 544 ( 188 S.E. 543); Turner v. State, 56 Ga. App. 488 ( 193 S.E. 78); Nelson v. State, 77 Ga. App. 255 ( 48 S.E.2d 570); Weltzbarker v. State, 89 Ga. App. 765 ( 81 S.E.2d 301). Cf. Bennefield v. State, 80 Ga. 107 ( 4 S.E. 869); Cleveland v. State, 7 Ga. App. 622 (2) ( 67 S.E. 696); Ware v. State, 7 Ga. App. 797 ( 68 S.E. 443); Boyd v. State, 18 Ga. App. 623 (1) ( 89 S.E. 1091); Rogers v. State, 27 Ga. App. 180 (1) ( 107 S.E. 889); Fairbanks v. State, 105 Ga. App. 27 ( 123 S.E.2d 319); Woolf v. State, 113 Ga. App. 412 ( 148 S.E.2d 199).
Judgment reversed. Pannell, P. J., and Evans, J., concur.