Case ID: tenn_36/html/0554-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "McKinney, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The State vs. Henry Barker.
    Cbiminae Haw. Retailing spirituous liquors on Sunday. Acts of 1838, olis. 120 and 169, and 1866, oh. 107. Indictment. By the passage of the act of 1866, ch. 107, which repeals the Tippling law of 1846, the act of 1838, ch. 169, forbidding the retailing of spirituous liquors on Sunday, is revived. By the latter act, the selling of spirituous liquors in any quantity on Sunday is an indictable offence. An indictment, therefore, which charges the defendant with “selling spirituous liquors on Sunday,” is good.
    EROM SULLIVAN.
    This is an appeal .by Attorney - General Powell, of the first Circuit, from a judgment of the Circuit Court of Sullivan county quashing an indictment. The indictment was found at November Term, 1856, and charges the defendant with “selling spirituous liquors on Sunday” to a certain person named as the purchaser. At the March Term, 1857, Judge Patteeson quashed the indictment.
    Sneed, Attorney-General, for the State.
    L. 0. and Matt. T. Haynes, for the defendant.
   McKinney, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was an indictment for “ selling spirituous liquors on Sunday.” On motion of the defendant, the indictment was quashed, and the Attorney - General, on behalf of the State, prosecuted an appeal in error to this Court. The judgment is clearly erroneous. The act of 1856, ch. 107, repealing the “Tippling law” of 1846, leaves in full force the act of 1838, ch. 159, which latter act prohibits the “retailing” of spirituous liquors on Sunday. The word “retailing,” in the act of 1838, cannot be taken in the limited sense of selling a less quantity than a quart, or any quantity to be drank on tke premises where sold. This would be absurd: ■ first, because 'by a prior act of the same session, (ch. 120, acts of. 1838,) the act of 1831, authorizing the retailing of spirituous liquors, had been repealed; so that, at the time of the passage of the subsequent act of 1838, ch. 159, there was no existing law authorizing the retailing of' spirituous liquors, in the technical sense of the term “retailing.” Consequently, we cannot .suppose that the word was used, or intended to be understood, in that sense in ch. 159. ]But again, the very end and object of the act of 1838, ch. 159, demonstrates that the word “ retailing,” in that act, was not intended to be so understood. As said in The State vs. Eskridge, 1 Swan, 413, “The object of the Legislature was to prevent the desecration of a day which, by our law, is dedicated to the duties of religion, by the sale of an article the use of which is calculated to produce the most shameless disregard of those duties. And, in this view, whether a quart, or a less quantity, were sold, can make no difference.”

Judgment reversed.