Court Opinion

ID: 9825816
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 14:06:45.491739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:22.851377
License: Public Domain

Ed. F. McFaddin, Justice, concurring. I agree with the result reached in this case — i. e., that the writ of prohibition should be denied — but I arrive at such result by a method of reasoning entirely different from that which is stated in the opinion of Mr. Justice George Rose Smith. Since the matter of multiple homicides may arise in some future case, I desire to state my reasons for voting to deny the writ of prohibition: 1. Our Statute (§ 2980, Pope’s Digest, § 41-2207 Ark. Stats, of 1947) defines manslaughter as: “The unlawful killing of a human being . . .” I emphasize that the crime relates to “a human being” and not to “human beings.” A separate crime is committed every time cmy human being is unlawfully killed. If six persons are unlawfully killed at the same time, then six crimes are committed. Our statute does not give a criminal a “bargain rate” on wholesale homicides. 2. Anything that might have been said in our earlier cases, contrary to the paragraph immediately stopra, has been changed by the provisions of Initiated Act 3 of 1936 (found on page 1384, et seq., of the volume containing the Acts of 1937); Section 20 of the said Act 3 amended § 3016, Crawford & Moses’ Digest, (relating to the joinder of offenses) so that the section with subdivision 12 added now reads: “The offenses named in each of the subdivisions of this section may be charged in one indictment: • • y ■ “Twelfth. The homicide of several persons, when committed by the same person or persons, at the same time or iii furtherance of the same criminal design.” This twelfth subdivision was entirely new to § 3016, Crawford & Moses’ Digest, and expressly allows the several offenses to be charged against an accused in one indictment charging the “homicide of several persons when committed. ... at the same time.” This quoted language from the initiated act certainly means that the unlawful killing of several persons, although done at the same time, constitutes separate offenses. Since separate offences were committed, then the conviction for one such killing would not allow the plea of former jeopardy to be sustained when the accused was brought to trial for another such killing, although done at the same time. Without laboring the point, I reiterate that in my opinion a separate offense is committed by each unlawful killing, and therefore the writ of prohibition was properly denied in this case. I am authorized to state that the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Robins agree with the views herein expressed.