Opinion
(Filed 13 December, 1922.)
Intoxicating Liquor — Spirituous Liquor — Evidence — Questions for Jury — Constitutional Law.
The evidence in this case held sufficient on appeal to sustain a verdict convicting the defendant of the unlawful manufacture of intoxicating liquor, and our State statute on the subject does not contravene the XVIII Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
APPEAL by defendants from Shaw, J., at March Term, 1922, of BUNCOMBE.
Attorney-General Manning and Assistant Attorney-General Nash for the State.
Reynolds, Reynolds Howell for defendants.
Criminal prosecution, tried upon an indictment charging the defendants with engaging in the manufacture of spirituous liquors in violation of the State statutes.
From an adverse verdict and judgment pronounced thereon, the defendants appealed.
The defendants' first and second exceptions are directed to his Honor's refusal to grant their motions for judgments as of nonsuit, made first at the close of the State's evidence and renewed at the close of all the evidence.
Robert Gilliam, a witness for the State, testified that he had seen all three of the defendants personally engaged in the operation of an illicit distillery in Buncombe County within the past two years; that, to his own knowledge, each and every one of the said defendants had done work and taken a part in the manufacture of said intoxicating liquors. This evidence, while denied by the defendants, was amply sufficient to carry the case to the jury. The defendants, having lost before the jury, doubtless appealed "to see how it might strike the Court."
The remaining exceptions, calling in question the validity of our State statutes since the adoption of the XVIII Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, must be overruled on authority of S. v. Campbell, 182 N.C. 911, and cases there cited.
No error.