Case ID: tenn_21/html/0424-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Reese, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Dobkins vs. The State.
    1. To constitute gaming, there must be a wager, and the event upon which the wager depended, must be decided.
    2. A charge in a presentment or indictment, that the defendant “bet upon a horse race,” does not charge an offence, as such words do notes vi termini import that the race was run.
    Alexander Dobkins was convicted in the circuit court of Claiborne county, at the September term, 1837, of “betting on ahorse race,” and sentenced to pay a fine of five dollars and costs of prosecution. He moved the court to arrest the judgment, on the ground, that the presentment did not charge the defendant with any offence against the laws of the State, the defendant being charged only with “betting, unlawfully, twenty dollars on a horse race.”
    The court, R. M. Anderson, judge, presiding, overruled this motion, and gave judgment against him, from which he appealed in error.
    
      Peck, for Dobkins.
    
      Attorney General, for the State,
    cited Bagley vs. The State, 1 Humphreys, 486: Bennett vs. The State, 2 Yerger, 472 : 2 Yerger, 281.
   Reese, J.

delivered the opinion of the court.

The indictment charged, that Dobkins and one Jones, “upon the 1st day of March, 1838, upon the plantation of Joseph McVay and William McVay, in the county of Claiborne, unlawfully did bet twenty dollars upon a horse race. And the jurors further present and say, that said horse race was not run upon a track or path kept for the purpose of'horse racing.” And, therefore, the plaintiff in error, here enquires, was the race run at all, or upon any track? It is certainly notso averredin the indictment, unless the words “did bet upon a horse ra.ce,” by their own proper meaning and force, announce that the race had “come off” or been executed. This court, acting in pursuance of the remedial principle prescribed by the act of 1824, ch. 5, sec. 5, for suppression of gaming, has held, that the words “did gamble” and “did game” contain and express, ex vi termini, the conjoint facts that a bet or wager was laid, and that the act to which it related was executed. This was going a good ways, and to the very verge. But here is the term “bet" upon a horse race, and to contend that the event or “coming off” of the race itself, as an act executed, is fairly involved in the meaning of the term, would be to strétch that term into an amplitude of meaning, violative of the language.

We are of opinion, therefore, that the judgment in this case rendered, must be reversed and arrested, and that the defendant go hence without day, &e.

Note. — For the various decisions of this State on the subject of gaming, see Cook’s Rep. 383: Peck, 93, 196: Martin & Yerger, 127, 129, 262 : 2 Yerg. 272, 472, 524 : 3 Yerg. 469 : 5 Yerg. 144, 184, 363, 367: 6 Yerg. 288 : 9 Yerg. 184, 389: Meigs, 99: 1 Humphreys, 384, 486.