Case ID: tenn_23/html/0429-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "GreeN, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The State vs. Priddy and Ray.
    An indictment for an affray must charge a fighting by two or more persons in a public place. It will not be good if it only charge, that they “made an affray.” It must charge the facts which constitute the offence, and not merely the technical designation thereof.
    At the November term, 1842, of the Circuit- Court of Henderson county, the grand jury returned a presentment, which charged, that James Priddy, Granville Priddy, James Ray and W. Eubanks, within the county of Henderson, on 25th day of July, 1842, “with force and arms, being unlawfully assembled together, and arrayed in warlike manner, then and there, in a public place, unlawfully and to the great terror and disturbance of all the good citizens of said State, then and there assembled, did make an affray in contempt of the laws,” &c.
    The defendant by his attorney, Bullock, moved the court to quash this presentment. The motion prevailed, and the presentment was ordered to be quashed. The Attorney General appealed on behalf of the State.
    
      Attorney General, for the State.
    This indictment is good, it being a copy from the form laid down in Archbold, p. 450. The charge, that the party made an affray, necessarily charges a fighting by two or more persons in a public place.
    
      Bullock, for the defendant, cited 5 Yerg. 356.
   GreeN, J.

delivered the opinion of the court.

The indictment in this case charges, that the defendants “did make an affray,” without alleging the facts which constitute an affray.

It is insisted, that as an affray can only be made, by two or more fighting together in a public place, the charge, that the parties “made an affray,” includes necessarily, a charge, that they fought together in a public place. But this is no answer to the objection. The word “affray” is the technical designation of the crime constituted by the facts of two or more persons fighting together in a public.place, — and these facts, not the legal conclusions from them, — must be charged in the indictment. Upon this point, the case of Simpson vs. The State, 5 Yerg. R. 356, is conclusive authority.

Let the judgment be affirmed.