Nagy

The appellant was convicted of arson of the first degree. The grounds urged upon this appeal for a reversal of the judgment are the insufficiency of the evidence generally to justify a verdict of guilty of arson in any degree, and more specifically the total absence of any legal evidence to support the implied finding of the jury that there was present in the building described by the information at the time the fire was created a human being or human beings, proof of which is necessary to constitute arson of the first degree. The only evidence offered by the prosecution which tends at all to support that portion of the implied verdict of the jury that a human being was in said building at the time the alleged offense was committed is the purest kind of hearsay. We have made careful examination of the evidence which, though circumstantial in its incriminatory bearing, was nevertheless sufficient to sustain a finding that the burning of the building was the wilful and malicious act of the defendant, done with the intent to destroy it. Applying the well known tests, the deductions made by the jury from the facts and circumstances would have supported a verdict of first degree arson…