Travitt v. State

In Travitt v. State, 228 Ga. App. 711 (492 SE2d 574) (1997), the Court recognized that when a defendant is charged with the violation of a penal statute containing disjunctively ("or") several ways or methods a crime may be committed, proof of any one of which is sufficient to constitute the crime, the indictment, in order to be good as against a special demurrer, must charge such ways or methods conjunctively ("and") if it charges more than one of them. Accordingly, on the trial of a defendant under an indictment so charging, it is not incumbent upon the state to prove all such separate ways or methods alleged in the indictment, but the state makes a prima facie case upon its establishment by proof of any one of them. Id. The Travitt court concluded that because the indictment properly charged the accused conjunctively and the state had offered proof of the commission of the offense by either method, charging the jury in the statutory language was not error. Id.