Opinion ID: 1095462
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Cassibry v. State The Mule Case

Text: But, the reader may ask, what about Cassibry v. State, 404 So.2d 1360 (Miss. 1981)? What has been presented above may be quite persuasive, the meaning of authorized considered as an original proposition, but did not Cassibry decide the point otherwise? The answer is four fold. First, the majority acknowledges that Cassibry scored a bulls-eye while most of today's cases (excepting, presumably, that of Supervisor Knox) do indeed approach the edge of the target. ( See majority opinion, p. 695) Cassibry at best suggests a direction. Second, nothing in Cassibry called upon this Court to consider whether conflict-of-interest legislation and activities of public officials concededly lawful thereunder contravened Section 109 of our constitution. Sen. Cassibry was able to point to no statute and argue that it legitimated his blatant conflict of interest. Cassibry was not a judicial review case. The Court thus was not called upon to adopt that special attitude of deference toward rules of law enacted by the legislature and approved by the governor. Third, insofar as Cassibry may be said to stand for the proposition that authorized should be said to include funded, its correctness is quite dubious. Certainly nothing in Colbert v. State, 86 Miss. 769, 39 So. 65 (1905); nor State Ex Rel. Barron v. Cole, 81 Miss. 174, 32 So. 314 (1902), relied upon in Cassibry and cited here supports such a view. Those cases merely hold that no state agency may expend monies without benefit of a prior legislative appropriation. Nothing in Colbert or Cole mentions Section 109 or in any way changes the general common sense meaning of the word authorize. Indeed, Colbert makes clear that very point I make: The creation of a debt is an entirely different thing from an appropriation for its payment. 86 Miss. at 779, 39 So. at 67. In this sense Sen. Anderson's contract with the Board of Trustees creates a debt in his favor, subject, of course, to his performance of his side of the bargain. In the same sense Rep. Nunnally's contract with the Benton County Board of Education creates a debt in Nunnally's favor. The creation of these debts is, as Colbert says, entirely different ... from an appropriation for [their] ... payment. 86 Miss. at 779, 39 So. at 67. Moreover, Cassibry notes that Oklahoma and South Dakota have construed their constitutional equivalents of Section 109 as the majority does here, but acknowledges that New Mexico has reached the opposite conclusion. Cassibry never explains why it considers Oklahoma and South Dakota to have the better view. The analysis in Part A above shows the Cassibry holding erroneous  and reveals it a result-oriented decision premised far more in value judgments than in law. Fourth and finally, Cassibry concerned a criminal prosecution under a statute, Miss. Code Ann. § 97-11-19 (Supp. 1975). Any mention of Section 109 was per force pure dicta. Added is that fact that the statute was repealed in 1983, before either of the present actions was commenced. See Miss. Laws, ch. 469, § 10 (1983). Cassibry is a mule case, one that should have no progeny.