Court Opinion

ID: 9856203
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:40:47.9341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:26:33.681534
License: Public Domain

PARKER, J.,
concurring: In considering the amendments to the warrants the difficulty is in determining whether the amendments are as to a matter of form or go to the substance of the charge. I find in Annotations in 7 A.L.R., p. 1526 et seq., and in 68 A.L.R., p. 930 et seq., the statement that “the allowance by the court of an amendment to an indictment as to the name of the person alleged therein to be the owner of the property which is the subject of the crime is generally authorized, as the correction of a defect in form.” In support of the text, cases are *522cited from Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Canada and England. An examination of a number of the cases cited discloses that the decisions were based on statutes of the various jurisdictions permitting in substance an amendment when a variance develops between the allegations in an indictment and the testimony as to the ownership of property.
Our statute G.S. 15-148 — Manner of alleging joint ownership of property — does not permit the amendments allowed in the instant case. Nor do I know of any statute of ours that does so.
Warrants are, in most instances, drafted by laymen who are not learned in the technicalities of the law, and are not familiar with the necessity of stating in the warrant the correct name of the owner of property. The essence of the offense here is a trespass upon land after being forbidden. G.S. 14-134. The correct name of the lessee of the golf course was not stated in the original warrants. A study of the Record and defendants’ brief discloses that the amendment to the warrants so as to allege the correct name of the lessee of the golf course did not affect the defense, or take the defendants at a disadvantage in any respect, as shown by the fact that their brief does not contend the allowance of the amendments to the original warrants was error. Yet, because of the defect in the name of the lessee, and by reason of the fact that we have no statute to permit an amendment in such a case, the judgment is arrested. The time of the trial has been wasted, and if the State desires to proceed further, it must start anew with new warrants.
One test to determine whether the change made was material is whether a verdict of conviction or acquittal on the warrant as drawn would be a bar to a warrant in the form in which it stood after the amendment. Com. v. Snow, 269 Mass. 598, 169 N.E. 542, 68 A.L.R. 920. It seems plain that a verdict of conviction or acquittal on the warrants in this case as drawn would not be a bar to the new warrants in the form to which they were changed by the amendments. It follows from these considerations that the change made in the warrants was one of substance and not of form.
In my opinion, the General Assembly, in its wisdom, should consider the advisability of enacting a statute that warrants issued by Justices of the Peace, Municipal or County Criminal Courts, can be amended on or before the trial, when there shall appear to be any variance between the allegations in the warrant and the evidence in setting forth the ownership of property, if the court should be of opinion that the amendment .will not prejudice the defendant in his defense. Various states have done so, as appears in the cases cited in the A.L.R. Annotations referred to above.