Court Opinion

ID: 9765824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:21:17.850231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:16.027635
License: Public Domain

Special Concurring Opinion
Webber, J.
I agree with the results arrived at by the court, but with respect to the indictment charging misprision of felony, I cannot subscribe to the reasons advanced in the opinion for holding the indictment insufficient.
The opinion states that the State should have set forth what the knowledge of the respondent was and how it was obtained. In my view, such a requirement would compel the State to plead mere details of proof. .The allegations of the indictment contain the following phrases with reference to knowledge: (1) “Having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony”; (2) “knowing that” followed by a sufficient allegation of adultery; (3) “all of which being then and there known to the said (respondent).” The statutory requirement is “having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony.” (Emphasis supplied). The word “actual” cannot be ignored. Its obvious intendment is to preclude hearsay, gossip, rumor and the like. Knowledge that one is suspected of crime or is rumored to have been involved in crime is not knowledge that one has actually committed crime. I would assume that the State would be compelled to prove knowledge through personal observation of the criminal act, or knowledge of such circumstantial evidence as would clearly show guilt and effectively eliminate a reasonable hypothesis of innocence, or knowledge by admission establishing guilt made by the guilty party to the respondent. This, as it seems to me, is the sort of knowledge which is charged in the indictment by the words “actual commission” and is the sort of knowledge the State must *489prove in support of the allegation. In State v. Wilson, 80 Vt. 249, 67 A. 583, the allegation as to knowledge was that the respondent “well knew,” which was deemed sufficient. In Bratton v. U. S., 73 Fed. (2nd) 795, no issue as to the method of alleging knowledge was raised, the allegations being of personal observation of the commission of the crime. In Commonwealth v. Lopes, 318 Mass. 453, 61 N. E. (2nd) 489, the allegations as to knowledge were “knowingly” and “well knowing that” without detail as to the method or sources of knowledge, and no issue was raised as to any insufficiency of allegation as to knowledge. In State v. Biddle, 2 W. W. Harr. (Del.) 401, 124 Atl. 804, the language of the indictment with reference to knowledge was “well knowing” and no more. Although the Biddle case is limited to the charge of a justice at nisi prius, the form of the indictment is at least an interesting precedent. In State v. Neddo, 92 Me. 71, an indictment directed against an alleged accessory after the fact, where the State was required to aver that the alleged accessory knew the principal felon to be such, the allegation was that the respondent “knew Coro ‘to be such principal felon and to have committed the crime aforesaid.’ ” It would appear that no effort was made to set forth the respondent’s means of knowledge. The court, although it examined every aspect of the indictment with meticulous care, made no issue as to the sufficiency of the allegation of knowledge. With respect to means of action, the court said at page 77, “ ‘It is in no case necessary to set forth the means by which the accessory before the fact incited the principal to commit the felony, or the accessory after received, concealed or comforted him; for it is perfectly immaterial in what way the purpose of one was effected, or the harboring of the other secured; and as the means are frequently of a complicated nature, it would lead to great inconvenience and perplexity if they were always to be described upon the record.’ II Bishop’s Crim. Proc. Sec. 8.” (Emphasis supplied.) It would seem that the quoted *490language might be applied with equal force to allegations as to means of knowledge. I conclude therefore that the allegations before us as to knowledge were adequate and that the means of knowledge become matters of proof.
As to concealment and failure to disclose, the State has treated our statute as requiring pleading in the conjunctive and has so pleaded in the words, “did feloniously, fraudulently and wilfully conceal and did not as soon as possible make known the commission of the said crime.” The State has added the words, “with intent thereby to hinder the due course of justice and to cause the aforesaid Simone Lauze to escape unpunished.” It is true that in the Bratton case, supra, it was said that positive acts of concealment must be set out such as “suppression of the evidence, harboring of the criminal, intimidation of witnesses, or other positive act designed to conceal from the authorities the fact that a crime has been committed.” It is necessary to distinguish between misprision of felony and the offense of accessory after the fact. If positive acts of concealment are of such a nature as to make the respondent guilty as an accessory after the fact, we have something more than misprision of felony which is essentially a criminal neglect. Bishop’s Crim. Law 9th Ed., Vol. 1, page 513, sec. 717, gives this definition: “Misprision, whether of a felony or of treason, is a criminal neglect, either to prevent it from being committed, or to bring to justice the offender after its commission, ‘but without such previous concert with or subsequent assistance to him, as will make the concealment an accessory before or after the fact.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.)
Our Legislature has seen fit to distinguish and define both the offense of misprision of felony and the offense of being accessory after the fact. The accessory Statute (now R. S., 1954, Chap. 145, Sec. 3) provides: “Every person, not standing in the relation of husband or wife, parent or child to the principal offender, who harbors, conceals, main*491tains or assists any principal felon, or accessory before the fact, knowing him to be such, with intent that he may escape detection, arrest, trial or punishment is an accessory after the fact and shall be punished” etc. The illustrations of positive acts of concealment quoted above from the Brat-ton case would all seem to fall within the scope of harboring or assisting as used by our accessory statute. In short, the practical result of requiring the pleading of positive acts would be to destroy any distinction between misprision of felony and the crime of being accessory after the fact. That this was the practical result of the interpretation of the Federal statute adopted in the Bratton case has been noted by some authorities. In Commonwealth v. Lopes, supra, at page 851 of 61 N. E. (2nd) it is said: “In State v. Graham, 190 La. 669, 670, 182 So. 711, 714, it was said of that statement (that misprision of felony is obsolete) that ‘the reason for that is that, in the modern acceptation of the term, misprision of felony is almost if not identically the same offense as that of an accessory after the fact’ as indeed it is under the Federal statute already quoted.” Whatever may be the law in other jurisdictions, I cannot agree that the offense of misprision of felony has not been maintained separate and distinct from the offense of an accessory after the fact by our statutes, or that to charge one with the former crime, the State must allege substantially what would be required to charge the latter offense. The key to the distinction lies in the proper interpretation of the word “conceals” in our misprision statute which implies that purposeful, unlawful intent which has been deemed essential to the common law crime of misprision. In both State v. Wilson, supra, and Commonwealth v. Lopes, supra, the courts, although primarily concerned with determining whether or not the common law crime of misprision of felony exists in their respective jurisdictions, place their emphasis on whether or not the concealment rests on evil motives and intent. Both of these cases go so far as to require affirma*492tive pleading that the concealment was with evil intent, a requirement which the State has met in the indictment before us. Bishop, supra, at page 515, Sec. 721, says: “It would seem in principle that the motive prompting the neglect of a misprision should be in some form evil as respects the administration of justice; for example, to prevent the offender’s punishment, or to withhold due aid from the government.” If, therefore, these authorities fairly interpret the requisites of the common law offense of misprision of felony, is it not reasonable to conclude that our Legislature in enacting a statute dealing with misprision of felony intended a similar meaning in its statutory use of the word “conceals”? If this be so, it follows that our Legislature has made it unlawful for one with actual knowledge of a felony to remain silent and inactive if in so doing he has a definite and positive intent to hinder and prevent justice and assist the culprit to escape punishment. If in fact the concealment is motivated by some natural reluctance which may stem from timidity or aversion to publicity, or (as in the Lopes case) a desire to avoid self-incrimination of another and separate crime, then the nature of the concealment lacks that essential essence of unlawfulness intended by the statute. Protection afforded by such an interpretation to citizens whose failure to act does not rest on an intention to aid the culprit or defeat justice eliminates that “intolerable oppressiveness” referred to in the Bratton case. It may be that the statutory offense of misprision is out of tune with our modern concepts of the duty of citizens, or so difficult of proof as to have little efficacy as a practical social discipline, but these considerations, if valid, are matters for legislative rather than judicial action. I question the propriety of destroying the statutory offense of misprision of felony by merging it into the offense of being accessory after the fact by what might be thought by some to be judicial legislation. I conclude therefore that the unlawful nature of the concealment should be both pleaded *493and proven by the State rather than so-called positive acts of concealment which would tend in most cases to charge the respondent with being an accessory after the fact. The State here has pleaded, (1) the knowledge of the actual commission of the alleged felony; (2) the felony itself alleged to have been known and concealed; (3) the concealment and failure to disclose; and (4) the unlawful nature of the concealment because of the unlawful intent which motivated it. If the indictment was not deficient in other respects, these averments should be sufficient.
There is another reason, however, which renders the indictment vulnerable to demurrer. The indictment alleges the time of the respondent’s knowledge as July 11,1953, and the time of the alleged adultery as July 4, 1953. Thereafter the indictment makes four averments of essential facts alleging as to the time thereof in each instance that they occurred “then and there.” Where multiple dates are used in an indictment, the mere use thereafter of “then and there” without specific reference to the selected date is a fatal defect. State v. Day, 74 Me. 220; see State v. Hurley, 71 Me. 354 and State v. Dumais, 137 Me. 95. A basic right of the respondent rather than a mere technicality is involved, for upon a variance as to time between allegation and proof the respondent may claim surprise and prejudice and seek postponement of his trial. See State v. McNair, 125 Me. 358 and State v. Morin, 126 Me. 136. For this reason, therefore, I agree that the indictment involving misprision must be adjudged bad.
The reasons for sustaining exceptions with respect to the indictment in the second case are fully and adequately covered by the opinion of the court.