Court Opinion

ID: 9808511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:40:12.991294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:14:11.302048
License: Public Domain

Shepherd, J.
(dissenting): Fully sympathizing as I do in all reasonable efforts to free the administration of the crim*872inal law from the refinements of needless technicalities, I am nevertheless unable to concur with my brethren in sustaining the indictment in the present case. The defendant is indicted under section 5, chapter 181 of the Acts of 1889, which makes it a criminal offence for any person to “ practice, or attempt to practice, medicine or surgery in this State,” without having first registered, and in other respects complied with the law. It thus appears that the statute has expressly created two offences, viz., the commission of the inhibited act, and the attempt to commit it. These offences are so distinct that in the latter a greater particularity is required in the indictment, this Court having conclusively settled, in State v. Colvin, 90 N. C., 717, that in such indictments some overt act of the accused, which, in the ordinary course of things, would result in the commission of the particular offence, must be alleged and proved.
The offences being distinct, it seems quite clear to me that they cannot be charged with the alternative, and I am unable to find a single authority in which such an indictment has ever been sustained. In addition to the elementary works on the criminal law, we have an express decision of this Court that such a bill is fatally defective. State v. Harper, 64 N. C., 130. Even the very statute (The Code, § 1183) which does away with formal objections, etc., provides that the offence shall be set forth ‘‘in a plain, intelligible and explicit mannerand how can it be said that this requirement is complied with by charging the defendant, as Mr. Archbold puts it (Crim. Practice & Pl., 278), “ with having done so or so.”
It is true that there are some authorities which hold that the use of the disjunctive is not fatal when the acts represent successive stages of one criminal transaction, as when the charge is “ cutting or causing to be cut,” but it must be noted that these cases relate only to one distinct offence, and *873rest upon the idea that one part is used only as explaining or illustrating the other.
Mr. Wharton (Crino. Law, § 294) shows that the weight of authority is even against this practice, for he says that if the charge is “ in the disjunctive, as that he murdered or caused to be murdered, forged or caused to be forged, burned or caused to be burned, sold spirituous or intoxicating liquors * * * * it is bad for uncertainty.” After citing some few American decisions to the contrary, he remarks that “ the principle in those cases seems to be that ‘or’ is only fatal when it renders the statement of the offence uncertain, and not so when one term is used only as explanatory of or illustrating the other.” It is very difficult to understand how the mere charge that one attempted to do an act can explain or illustrate that act when already completed.
I think that we should adhere to the well settled rule that alternative charges of distinct offences ought not to be sustained.
Per curiam. . No error.