City of Arcola v. Wilkinson

84 N.E. 264, 233 Ill. 250
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 20, 1908
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 84 N.E. 264 (City of Arcola v. Wilkinson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Arcola v. Wilkinson, 84 N.E. 264, 233 Ill. 250 (Ill. 1908).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Farmer

delivered the opinion of the court:

This was an action of debt brought by appellant in the circuit court of Douglas county, against appellee, to recover penalties provided by an ordinance of appellant for a violation thereof by selling intoxicating liquors within the corporate limits of appellant. The ordinance is set out in hcec verba in the" first count of the declaration, and so much of it as is necessary to be considered reads as follows:

“Section 1. Be it ordained by the city council of the city of Areola: That whoever shall, by himself or another, either as principal, clerk or servant, directly or indirectly, sell or give away any intoxicating, malt, vinous, mixed or fermented liquors, shall upon conviction be fined two hundred ($200) dollars for each offense.

“Sec. 2. Any shift or device to evade section 1 of this ordinance shall be held to be a violation of said section.”

All the counts of the declaration charge appellee with the violation of said ordinance by selling, on different dates named, intoxicating and malt liquors in the city of Areola, whereby an action accrued to said city to demand of the appellee the sum of $200 as a penalty for such violations. Appellee filed the general issue. A jury was empaneled and sworn and the trial entered upon. One witness was sworn and testified for appellant. This witness testified that after the 10th day of July, 1906, and before the 30th of March, 1907, he bought whisky from appellee, at her house in the city of Areola, as many as a dozen times, and paid her ten and fifteen cents per drink therefor.

• When appellant offered the ordinance in evidence declared on in the .declaration, appellee objected to it. One of the grounds of the objection was, .that it violated section 11 of article 2 of the constitution, which provides that “all penalties shall be proportioned to the nature of the offense.” Other grounds of the objection were, that the ordinance does not purport to prohibit the sale of intoxicating' liquors, but only provides a penalty for such sale; also because it provided a penalty against a person for a sale by his clerk or servant, and also because the ordinance was not properly proven. The court sustained appellee’s objection to the introduction of the ordinance and directed the jury to return a verdict for defendant, which it accordingly did. Appellant thereupon entered a motion for a new trial, which the court overruled and rendered judgment on the verdict, and appellánt has prosecuted this appeal direct to this court under a certificate of the trial court that the validity of a municipal ordinance is involved and in his opinion the public interest required the appeal to be talcen direct to this court. (Practice act of 1907, sec. 118.)

The forty-sixth clause of section 1, article 5, chapter 24, Hurd’s Statutes of 1905, confers power upon cities “to license, regulate and prohibit the selling or giving away of any intoxicating, malt, vinous, mixed or fermented liquor,” etc. The ninety-sixth clause of the same article confers power upon cities “to pass all ordinances, rules, and make all regulations, proper or necessary, to carry into effect the powers granted to cities or villages, with such fines or penalties as the city council or board of trustees shall deem proper: Provided, no fine or penalty shall exceed $200 and no imprisonment shall exceed-six months for one offense.”

Appellee’s contention is, that in providing only the maximum penalty that could be imposed by the ordinance for its violation, no difference what the circumstances of the violation might be shown to have been, it violated the constitutional provision requiring all penalties to be proportioned to the nature of the offense. We cannot agree with this contention. While it may be possible to imagine cases where the imposition of the extreme penalty allowed by law would be an unreasonable exercise of the power conferred upon cities to adopt ordinances providing penalties for their violation and where the penalty imposed would not seem to be proportioned to the nature of the offense, still, in a large measure, penalties imposed for violations of ordinances must rest within the discretion of the municipal authorities. The mere fact that the maximum penalty is imposed in any case does not make the ordinance void. In the very nature of things, severer penalties would be provided for the commission of some offenses than for others of a less serious character. Within the limits of the power conferred by statute municipal authorities have a large discretion in providing penalties for the violation of ordinances. The object of the penalty is two-fold: it is intended as a punishment to the violator, and also as an example and warning to deter others from like violations. The legislature having authorized cities to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors within their limits, it is for the city council to determine, within the limits of the authority conferred upon it, what penalties shall be inflicted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in violation of ordinances prohibiting such sale.

The principles announced in People ex rel. v. State Reformatory, 148 Ill. 413, are applicable here. The difference between that case and this is, that there the question was as to whether the punishment provided by statute, instead of an ordinance, was in conflict with section n of article 2 of the constitution. In that case the court said (p. 421) : “For very many years the statute of this State has been such that the punishment for burglary might extend to a term of imprisonment of twenty years, and the validity of siich statute has not been, and could not successfully be, called in question. And even if the statute fixing the punishment for burglary was such as that it imposed an absolute penalty of twenty years’ imprisonment upon every conviction for such crime, its validity could not on that ground be impeached. When the legislature has authorized a designated punishment for a specified crime it must be regarded that its action represents the general moral ideas of the people, and the courts will not hold the punishment so authorized as either cruel and unusual, or not proportioned to the nature of the offense, unless it is a cruel or degrading punishment not known to the common law, or is a degrading punishment which had become obsolete in the State prior to the adoption of its constitution, or is so wholly disproportioned to the offense committed as to shock the moral sense of the community. (See In re Bayard, 25 Hun, 546.) Neither the infliction of twenty years’ imprisonment for the crime of burglary, nor the infliction for the violation of any provision of the Criminal Code of the maximum quantity of the usual punishment for such violation, falls within either of these categories. We think that from the fact that the statute here in question imposes the maximum term of imprisonment provided by law for the crime for which the prisoner is convicted, it does not follow that such statute is in violation of the constitutional requirement that all penalties shall be proportioned to the nature of the offense.”

Pervear v. Commonwealth, 5 Wall. 475, was an indictment under the laws of, the State of Massachusetts charging defendant with keeping and maintaining a tenement for the illegal sale of intoxicating liquors.

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Bluebook (online)
84 N.E. 264, 233 Ill. 250, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-arcola-v-wilkinson-ill-1908.