State v. Drake
State v. Drake
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This indictment is framed under the .supplement of March 1st, 1849. So much of it as is material to this inquiry is as follows: “ If any person or persons maliciously or without lawful justification, with intent to cause and promre the miscarriage of a woman then pregnant with child, shall administer to her, prescribe for her, or advise or direct her to take or swallow any poison, drug, medicine, or noxious thing; • and if any person or persons, maliciously and -without lawful justification, shall use any instrument or means whatever with the like intent, and every person with the like intent, knowingly aiding and assisting such offender shall, on conviction,” &c.
The indictment contains four counts, and the motion is made to quash the whole of them. They are all subject to the same objection. To make the transactions mentioned criminal under the statute, it is necessary that they should have been done with intent, to cause and procure the miscarriage of a woman then pregnant, <fce. These words, cause and procure, are not used in any of the counts. They seem to have been purposely kept apart, for the word cause is used in the first count, and the word procure in each of the other three. This objection seems to me to be fatal, for it is the intent with which the thing is done that makes it criminal at all. That intent, to become criminal, must be to
The law on this subject seems to be very well settled. Bishop, in the first volume of his Avork on Criminal Law, § 134, lays down the rule broadly but positively. In speaking ■of penal statutes, he says, that “ no case is to be brought by construction within the statute Avhile it falls not Avithin all its words. If a case is fully within the mischief to be remedied, if not Avithin the words, construction will not be permitted to bring it within the statute.” The doctrine thus enunciated is sustained by many cases there cited. It is sound and salutary, as Avell as safe, and should not be departed from. If we once admit such a practice in the
The first, second, and fourth counts are subject to another ■objection, quite as serious as the one just considered. The means or things made use of to produce the miscarriage are all charged disjunctively, that is to say, it is charged in substance in these counts, that the defendant did administer, &c., to the female a certain poison or drug or medicine or noxious .thing to the jurors unknown. This must certainly be bad, for two reasons: first, it charges the defendant with nothing in direct and express terms. It does not charge that he administered the whole of the prohibited things, nor any one of them, but charges that he did one tiling or another, or another, which can mean nothing; secondly, it does not apprize the defendant against what he is to defend himself. The inference from the language, as used, is not that he employed all the prohibited articles and means, but that he used some one of them, but which it was the grand jury did not know, and (lid not say, consequently they have left the defendant in as much doubt as they were themselves.
The law, on the subject of making these charges disjunctively instead of conjunctively, seems also very well settled. The rule is laid down in Wharton’s Crim. Law, page 364, very explicitly, and it is sustained by numerous authorities, that the disjunctive form is not sufficient.
I think, therefore, that the indictment should be quashed.
Indictment quashed.
Cited in State v. Malloy, Same v. Adams, 5 Vr. 414.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- State v. GEORGE M. DRAKE
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- 1 case
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- Published