State v. McWilliams

7 Mo. App. 99, 1879 Mo. App. LEXIS 54
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 22, 1879
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 7 Mo. App. 99 (State v. McWilliams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. McWilliams, 7 Mo. App. 99, 1879 Mo. App. LEXIS 54 (Mo. Ct. App. 1879).

Opinion

Lewis, P. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

This cause was tried before a jury in the Court of Criminal Correction, upon an information which charges that the defendant, “ on the 28th day of June, 1878, and on divers other days, wrongfully and illegally did sell, and expose to sale, and keep on hand for the purpose of sale, and did advertise and cause to be advertised for sale, and did then and there aid and assist and was concerned in the sale and exposure to sale of certain lottery-tickets, or shares or parts of lottery-tickets, in a certain lottery known as the Missouri State Lottery,” etc. The jury found the defendant guilty, and assessed his punishment at a fine of $1,000. There was a motion to quash the information, on the ground, chiefly, that it embraced different and distinct offences in one count. The court’s refusal to sustain this motion is assigned for error.

In The State v. Hindman, 4 Mo. App. 582, an information framed substantially in the same language was held to be good. The defendant’s counsel asks us to review our decision in that case, and supports his application in an ingenious argument presented with undeniable force. He points out the distinction between a series of distinct acts constituting together a single offence, and a number of acts, each being in itself a separate offence. Thus, quoting from The Commonwealth v. Eaton, 15 Pick. 273: “ It is true that an offer to sell, without selling a ticket, is an offence by the statute, but an offer to sell and actually selling is but one offence. A sale, ex vi termini, includes an offer to sell.” So, publishing and causing to be published a certain [101]*101libel constitute but one act, and therefore but one offence. But the learned counsel insists that if both the acts and the offences be distinct and independent of each other, they cannot be joined in the same count. He proceeds to analyze the charges in the present information, and finds them reducible to three independent accusations, viz.: 1. The selling and causing to be sold, etc. 2. The exposing and causing to be exposed to sale, etc. 3. The advertising and causing to be advertised for sale. But the reduction stops too soon. If every sale includes an offer to sell, why may it not also include an exposure to sale? And since advertising for sale is but an auxiliary of exposure to sale, why may not both acts be considered as only so many steps to the single offence of selling? It is no answer to say that each step is severally prohibited, and therefore a distinct offence ; for it is already shown that an offer to sell may be a distinct offence, and yet, when coupled with an actual sale, it becomes only an element in the offence of selling. But we are not dependent upon this reasoning for a defence of our conclusions in The State v. Hindman. We find them unequivocally sustained in The State v. Murphy, 47 Mo. 274. The defendant was charged in one count with keeping open a tippling-shop on Sunday, and with selling on the same day, to divers persons, one glass and gill of beer, one glass and gill of whiskey, etc., each for the sum of ten cents, contrary, etc. Here were several distinct accusations, each capable of standing by itself. Even the keeping open was not necessarily included in the selling. Either act could have been performed without the other. Every sale made was also a separate offence against the statute. Said the court: “The rule is that no more than one offence can be charged in one count; but there are exceptions. When a statute in one clause forbids several things, or creates several offences in the alternative which are not repugnant in their nature or penalty, the clause is treated in pleadings as though it created but one [102]*102offence; and they may be all united conjunctively in one count, and the count is sustained by proof of one of the offences charged.” In the present instance, the statute forbids in one clause, in the alternative, all the acts which are conjunctively charged in the information. Wag. Stat. 503, sect. 28. This brings the pleading within the letter of approval by the Supreme Court.

But were this a new question, and involved in any doubt, another difficulty would oppose the defendant’s claim. It is a settled rule of practice that a motion to quash will not be reviewed by an appellate court, where it was not followed up in the court below by a motion in arrest of judgment. The State v. Conrad, 21 Mo. 271. The defendant filed no motion in arrest in the present case, and even if the informations were found to be defective, there could be no reversal on that account.

The defendant claims protection against this prosecution, under the act incorporating the town of New Franklin, approved January 16, 1833, and the several supplementary enactments, with the contracts and transfers made by their authority. The trustees of the town were authorized to raise by lottery the sum of $15,000 for the construction of a macadamized road from New Franklin to the bank of the Missouri River, and were also empowered to contract with any person to have the lottery drawn in any part of the United States, on such terms as they should consider most advantageous. On June 1, 1842, an agreement was entered into whereby the trustees did “ sell, dispose, transfer, and set over” to Walter Gregory “the said lottery, and all right to control the same;” in consideration whereof Gregory was to pay to the trustees the sum of $250 on the first day of January and the first day of June in each year, until the sum of $15,000 should be fully raised to the trustees, or to any person by them authorized to receive the same. The terms, as to amounts and times of payment, were somewhat modified by certain stipulated credits and [103]*103subsequent extensions. It is conceded that if the Gregory contract was still in force and unexpired on the twenty-eighth day of June, 1878, the defendant, as an agent of the assignees of that contract, has a good and sufficient defence. It is also conceded that, in the ordinary and uninterrupted course of the payments as stipulated for., the entire sum of $15,000 would have been raised .and the authorization of the lottery would have expired in July, 1877.

The Gregory contract contains the following stipulation : “And the respective parties further agree that the party of the second part (Gregory) shall not be bound by this agreement in the event of any interference by the Legislature, judiciary, or any other power, so that he cannot conduct the business ; in which case, payments to be made by him to time of such interference only.” There was testimony at the trial tending to show that the business of selling lottery-tickets under the New Franklin franchise, in the city of St. Louis, was stopped by police interference from June 15, 1876, until March 4, 1878. The last payment made by the assignees to the trustees was in June, 1876. It is claimed for defendant that the period during which the business was suspended by police interference must be left out of the computation, and that the assignees were entitled to have as much more time added to the duration of their franchise as was taken away by the interference.

The vital question is, whether the stipulation above quoted, if enforced on the part of Gregory or his assignees, operated a final abandonment of the contract, or merely a temporary suspension of its obligation, with a corresponding extension of the time for making payments.

The question seems to answer itself in the statement.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Duffy v. State
789 P.2d 821 (Wyoming Supreme Court, 1990)
State v. Tobin
226 P. 681 (Wyoming Supreme Court, 1924)
State v. Vogel
64 Mo. App. 161 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1895)
State v. Kaub
19 Mo. App. 149 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1885)
State v. Sellner
17 Mo. App. 39 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1885)
State v. Ochsner
9 Mo. App. 216 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1880)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
7 Mo. App. 99, 1879 Mo. App. LEXIS 54, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mcwilliams-moctapp-1879.