Case ID: cal-unrep_2/html/0109-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the COURT.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PEOPLE, Respondent, v. WILLIAM CLARKE, Appellant.
    No. 10,596;
    February 24, 1881.
    Criminal Law.—An Information Inartificially Drawn and More Verbose than necessary is to be sustained if good in substance.
    APPEAL from Superior Court, Monterey County.
    Defendant was charged by information with having published a libel upon Alice M. Cullman by writing a false and defamatory letter concerning her, and causing it to be placed in an open place on her premises. The defamatory matter was an attempt to connect her with one Chona Somora, a notorious character of Salinas city, who had been convicted of maintaining a public nuisance. The information set forth at great length and in a rambling manner all the eircumstances, even the most remote,' supposed to bear upon the charge, and contained copies of the indictment against, and sentence, of Chona Somora.
    Charles W. Quilty for appellant; A. L. Hart, attorney general, for respondent.
   By the COURT.

The defendant was charged, by information, with the crime of libel. He filed a demurrer to the information, which was overruled, whereupon he entered a plea of “not guilty.” Subsequently he withdrew that plea and entered a plea of “guilty,” after which judgment was pronounced against him. From the judgment he brings this appeal on the ground that the facts stated in the information are insufficient to constitute a public offense.

We have considered the information, and while it is true that it is in artificially drawn, and that the facts constituting the defense might, and ought to, have been more concisely stated, we are nevertheless of the opinion that it is good in substance.

Judgment affirmed.