Smith v. City of Albany
Smith v. City of Albany
Opinion of the Court
Lillie Pearl Smith was tried and convicted in in the Recorder’s Court of the City of Albany on a charge under the provisions of Chapter 14, § 16 (a) of the Code of the City of Albany, making it “unlawful for any person to possess any ticket, number, combination, or anything representing a chance in any lottery or gift enterprise, commonly known as bolita or number’s game, or other similar scheme or device, within the corporate limits of the city or the police jurisdiction thereof.” Her petition for certiorari to the superior court, after having been sanctioned, was overruled, and the exception here is to that judgment. In the brief and argument of counsel for the plaintiff in error before this court, the only contentions are that the ordinance of the City of Albany under which the defendant was convicted is “illegal and void” because it does not provide that the possession of lottery paraphernalia must be coupled with the intent to violate the ordinance, and that the ordinance is in direct conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of the State of Georgia (Code., Ann., § 2-204), prohibiting lotteries and the sale of lottery tickets. Held:
1. While the defendant in her petition for certiorari sought to raise the constitutionality of the ordinance with respect to Art. 1, Sec. 1, Par. 3 of the State Constitution and with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, the due-process clauses of the respective Constitutions, the constitutionality of the ordinance with respect to these provisions, if it was raised in the Recorder’s Court of the City
2. The section of the Code of the City of Albany under which the defendant was convicted merely makes the possession of any ticket, etc., unlawful, and it does not prohibit lotteries or the sale of lottery tickets, nor does it make the selling or procuring or furnishing of any ticket, etc., or the operation of a lottery a crime. If it may be said that the other grounds of demurrer interposed by the defendant in the Recorder’s Court of the City of Albany and attacking the ordinance on constitutional grounds sufficiently raised the question as to whether the ordinance violated the provisions of Art. 1, Sec. 4, Par. 1 (Code, Ann., § 2-401) of the State Constitution prohibiting the enactment of any local or special law in conflict with the general law and affecting private rights, such demurrers were properly overruled since an examination of the particular ordinance under attack and under which the defendant was convicted shows that it does not purport to make criminal that which is by the constitutional and statutory provisions referred to in those grounds of demurrer made a crime. The constitutional and statutory provisions referred
3. The trial court did not err in overruling the petition for certiorari.
Judgment affirmed.
Concurring Opinion
concurring specially. .1. I do not believe the second ground of demurrer attempts to' raise a constitutional question, but it merely contends that the ordinance is void in that it attempts to make a crime an act which may be done without criminal intent. However, I do not think this ground of demurrer is good. The criminal intent referred to in Code § 26-201 is an intent to do an act which is by law prohibited. Balark v. State, 81 Ga. App. 649, 652 (59 S. E. 524); Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Caroll, 169 Ga. 333, 343 (150 S. E. 208). Reid v. Perkerson, 207 Ga. 27 (60 S. E. 2d 151) sustained the validity of an ordinance making illegal the possession of lottery tickets with intent to patronize a lottery. The ordinance here goes further, making the possession of such tickets illegal regardless of the purpose for which they are possessed. The intent to possess them is the only criminal intent involved. We have similar statutes relating to possessing liquor (Code § 58-201) and possessing apparatus for distilling (Code § 58-209), and the purpose of the possession is not a part of the crime. Code § 58-209 was, in Johnson v. State, 152 Ga. 270 (109 S. E. 673), held not void because too vague and uncertain for enforcement, and it would appear that the same is true here. Other States have upheld statutes making mere possession of lottery tickets a crime. See Ford v. State, 85 Md. 465 (37 Atl. 172, 41 L.R.A. 551); Ferguson v. U.S., 123 Atl. 2d 615, affd. 239 Fed. 2d 952.
2. A further ground of demurrer contends that the proviso
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- SMITH v. CITY OF ALBANY
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