Claiborne

This is an appeal by the state from the order of the trial court granting defendant’s motion for a new trial after a verdict of guilty. The defendant was tried upon an information charging him with the crime of grand larceny, consisting in the taking of an automobile of the value of fifteen hundred dollars. At the close of the evidence offered by the prosecution the defendant moved for an advised verdict, which motion was denied. Thereafter the defendant offered evidence consisting of his own testimony and that of other witnesses and the jury found him guilty. On his motion for a new trial the defendant relied upon his attack upon the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant the verdict of guilty. The parties to this appeal concede that the trial court granted the new trial upon that ground and that the question involved in this appeal is whether in doing so he abused the discretion which the law vested in him in such proceedings.

The evidence on the part of the prosecution is concededly merely circumstantial and consists of the testimony of witnesses showing that some time after the automobile had been stolen by parties unknown, while left by its owner upon a public street in the…