415 F. 2d 340 - United States v. Evans

This appeal is from a jury conviction on two counts.1 The appellant received consecutive sentences. The count of concern on appeal charged burglary under 18 U.S.C.A. § 13, which makes punishable as federal offenses various acts committed on a federal area and punishable under the laws of the state in which the federal area is situated.^1A

The sole point raised on appeal is the contention that although there was evidence of unlawful entry, there was no evidence of a breaking, so that the court erred in denying a motion for judgment of acquittal.2

The appellant's point is without merit. There was evidence that he was discovered in the early morning hours on the second floor of a barracks building on the Ft. Benning, Georgia, Military Reservation, while going through the trousers pocket of a soldier. He fled and was captured near the building. He had in his possession money identified as having been in the wallet of one of the men in the barracks.

There was testimony that each door opening of the barracks had a wooden door with windows in it and a screen door, that each door had a spring-loaded automatic locking device, and that all these locking devices were working properly. The first floor of the barracks building stood six to eight feet above ground on pillars. There was testimony that the windows had screens on them, other testimony that some did and some did not. There was no testimony that all windows were closed.

It is not necessary that splinters fly to have a breaking. Opening a closed door, effecting an entrance thereby, is a breaking. Grimes v. State, 77 Ga. 762 (1886); Bloodworth v. State, 9 Ga.App. 161, 70 S.E. 892 (1911). It is a breaking even though the door has remained shut only because of friction of the door with the sill and casing. 2 Wharton Criminal Law § 413, p. 36-37. Pushing open a screen door held shut by spring hinges also is a breaking. Id at 37.3

From the testimony concerning operative spring devices on the doors, and the testimony of the height of the windows above ground, and the testimony that there were screens on the windows, the jury was entitled to conclude that appellant committed a breaking. The mere possibility or conjecture that he entered through an open aperture and broke out of the house rather than broke in, does not destroy the legitimate inference that he broke and entered. Mitchell v. State, 69 Ga.App. 771, 26 S.E.2d 663 (1943).

Appellant urges the applicability of Mosley v. State, 49 Ga.App. 147, 174 S.E. 543 (1934) and Slappey v. State, 50 Ga.App. 17, 176 S.E. 908 (1934). In the former case there was a total lack of evidence as to whether the doors and windows of a house, in which defendant was found hiding under a bed, were closed. In the latter case the testimony of the prosecuting witness was so ambiguous that the appellate court was unable to determine whether he meant by his statements that he closed and locked his door or that he left it open and the accused slipped in the open door and hid. Neither case is any comfort to appellant. Cook v. State, 63 Ga.App. 358, 11 S.E.2d 217 (1940), held there was no breaking where the evidence showed that the accused entered an open window and "pushed aside" window curtains. Presumably Cook rests on the theory articulated in some cases that there must be a breaking, putting aside or removal of something which constitutes part of the building and is relied on as security against intrusion. See 2 Wharton Criminal Law, § 412 p. 35. If Cook establishes such a requirement in Georgia it avails nothing to the appellant in this case, where the concern is with doors, windows and screens.4

Affirmed.