Court Opinion

ID: 9809054
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:59:42.828913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:22.077031
License: Public Domain

Merrimon, J.
(dissenting). I dissent from the opinion and judgment of the Court. It seems to me very clear that the statute (acts 1885, ch. 66) is intended to and does operate only prospectively in all respects. It in no way affects,, nor was it intended to affect, offences already perpetrated at the time of its enactment; it does not in terms purport to do so, nor is there anything in it, or in it taken in connection with the general statutory provision {The Code, sec. 3766) that necessarily gives it such effect. That section provides that “ when a part of a statute is amended, it is not to be considered as having been repealed and re-enacted in the amended form; but the portions which are not altered are to be considered as having been the law since their enactment, and the new 'provisions as having been enacted at the time of the amendment.” That is, the statute stands intact as unamended up to the time of the amendment, and the latter takes effect at the time of its enactment; not having any retroactive effect at all, or any such application, it speaks as amended only for that time.
The statute (The Code, § 985, par. 6) makes it indictable to “ unlawfully and maliciously set fire to any * * * mill,” &c. The amendment thereto — the statute first above cited— makes it indictable to “wantonly and wilfully set fire to any mill,” &c. When ? Plainly after the amendment of the statute. The amendment struck the words ‘ unlawfully and maliciously ” out of it, not as of the time it was enacted or at all in contemplation of law as to offences committed before the amendment, but as, and only as, of the time of its enactment, and substituted the other words, “ wantonly and wilfully,” these to operate prospectively and not to have *363any retroactive effect. The very purpose of these words of the general statutory provision — " and the new provision as having been enacted at the time of the amendment ” — is to preclude the interpretation that such amendment should have retroactive effect. The purpose was not to repeal the old statute, but to amend and make it a new one, possessing different requisites, from and after the amendment. Otherwise, the words last recited, and, indeed, the whole statutory provision recited, would have no effect — would be useless and nugatory. It expressly decl ares, that “ where a part of a statute is amended, it is not to be considered as having been repealed,, re-enacted in the amended form,” but the part unaffected by the amendment continues, “ and the neiu provisions as having been enacted at the time of the ¿mendment.” “ It is not to be considered as having been repealed.” And why ? Because it is to be considered as intact as to offences perpetrated before the amendment.
The interpretation I have thus given is strengthened as the correct one, in that it is not tó be presumed that the Legislature intended to let crimes,.committed in violation of the statute before the amendment, go unpunished, in the absence of any declaration to that effect, nor is such purpose to be allowed to appear by mere inference, especially in the face of the general statutory provision cited. The settled purpose to punish severely the perpetrators of such offences is manifest, and I cannot consent to allow guilty men (not meaning to say that the defendant is, or is not, guilty) to escape by the observance of a mere technicality, which, it seems to me, is clearly excluded, and intentionally, in the way I have indicated.