Rowe v. State

The statement made by the solicitor to the court in the presence and hearing of the jury, “Why, if the court please, he had a whisky still in that house at that time,” was wholly improper, unauthorized, and highly prejudicial, and was not borne out by any of the testimony adduced upon this trial. The testimony of the state witnesses was to the effect that they found locked up in a trunk a copper worm to a still and some connections. This was all the testimony relating to “a still,” and the statement by the solicitor, above quoted, was of a substantive outside fact — stated as a fact — and…