Court Opinion

ID: 9809896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:31:21.285259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:05.632946
License: Public Domain

Hoke, J.,
dissenting: There was evidence for the State direct and positive that defendant sold a pint of whiskey to L. A. Dempsey, a State’s witness, and to another witness by the name of Hodge, but I am of opinion that the Court is not sufficiently advertent to the fact that the jury evidently were not willing to accept or act on this testimony, but that defend*646ant bas been convicted on the theory that defendant’s evidence is true. This testimony very correctly summarized in the opinion of the Court was in part as follows: “Hodge brought the basket of whiskey to our house and asked Tom to keep it for him. This was on Saturday before the night he and Dempisey came there. He waited until Tom came. It sat there on the desk from the night Hodge brought it there. I never saw Tom take anything out of the basket at any time. I saw Hodge pick up the 50 cents and put it in his pocket. Tom was lying down at the time, and he did not get any of the money. Hodge was pretty drinky. I am defendant’s wife.” In this connection the State’s witness Dempsey testified: “After Denton was arrested and before he was tried, Hodge told me to go to see Denton and tell him that if he (Denton) would stand out of the way, he (Hodge) would take care of his family while he was gone. I went and told Denton what Hodge said. This was on Monday after we got the whiskey.” As to the progress of the trial the record then states: “The jury, after remaining out for some time, came into court and asked for further instructions upon the question of the whiskey having been brought to defendant’s house by the State’s witness, Hodge, and allowed by defendant to be sold by Hodge in the house and in the jn’osence of defendant.” In response to the inquiry, his Honor said to the jury: “That if they should be satisfied from the evidence in the case that the State’s witness Hodge owned the whiskey and brought the same into defendant’s house for the purpose of selling it there, and that Hodge, on the night in question, sold a pint of the whiskey to the witness Dempsey, in the presence of defendant and with his knowledge, then the defendant would be guilty of aiding and abetting the sale by Hodge to Dempsey, and that since in misdemeanors all aiders and abettors are principals, the defendant would be guilty, as a principal, of selling whiskey to Dempsey.” To this response the defendant in apt time excepted.
Undoubtedly, it is an elementary principle, as stated in the Court’s opinion, that one who aids and abets another in the commission of a misdemeanor may be convicted as a principal. *647And it is equally elementary tbat one does not necessarily become either an aider or abettor in a crime because it is committed on his premises, though it is done with his knowledge and in his presence. In Clark’s Criminal Law, p. 103, it is said: “To aid and abet the commission of a crime is to assist or encourage the perpetrator. There must be some participation. Mere presence and neglect to endeavor to prevent a felony will not of itself make one a principal in the second degree,” etc. And in McLean’s Criminal Law, sec. 194, the author says: “Some degree of participation in the criminal act must be shown in order to establish criminal liability. Proof that one stood by at the commission of a crime without taking steps to prevent it, does not alone indicate such participation or combination in the wrong deed as to show criminal liability, although he approves the act.” In like effect is S. v. Douglas, 26 Pac., 276; White v. People, 81 Ill., 334, and, so far as examined, the principle is uniformly approved.
There is no evidence that Hodge was in the habit of doing this thing. The one basket of whiskey is all that the testimony shows was brought to defendant’s house. Neither the evidence of defendant on which the jury acted nor the charge of the court to which the exception was taken contains the suggestion that defendant knew that the whiskey was being brought to the house by Hodge for the purpose of being sold — as a matter of fact it came in defendant’s absence, and, to my mind, by correct interpretation this question of the jury and response of the judge can and was only intended to mean that defendant was guilty as aider and abettor if Hodge brought the whiskey to the house of defendant and there sold it in his presence and with his knowledge. Such a conclusion might very well be drawn from the facts in evidence, but if it is done it should be by the jury and not by the court; for under the circumstances suggested guilt does not necessarily follow because of an alleged sale by Hodge on defendant’s premises and in his presence. Our Constitution provides that “No person shall bo convicted of crime but by the unanimous verdict of a jury of good and lawful men in open court,” and this Court has been *648uniformly insistent tbat tbis right shall be properly safeguarded and applied in the administration of the criminal law. Speaking to this question in S. v. R. R., 149 N. C., 512, the Court said: “The ruling made on the former appeal in this case, and sustained in the forcible opinion of Associate Justice Brown, was, that when there was conflict in the evidence on any essential feature of the charge, or when, though there was no such conflict, more than one inference of fact was permissible, and any one of these consistent with defendant’s innocence, the question of his guilt or innocence was for the jury and not for the court. This is by no means a trivial or technical distinction, but goes to the integrity and very existence of the right of a citizen to a trial by jury. If, on the testimony, there is an inference of defendant’s innocence permissible, and a judge is allowed to charge the jury, of they believe the evidence they will find defendant guilty,’ this is condemnation by the judge, and the right of trial by jury, so justly valued as the ultimate protection of freemen under the forms of law, is usurped by the judge, and the constitutional rights of the defendant are denied him. No person shall be convicted of crime but by the unanimous verdict of a jury of good and lawful men in open court,’ is the. language of our Bill of Rights; and if there is an inference of guilt and one of innocence arising on the evidence, the jury must determine which inference shall be established. As said by Henderson, J., in Bank v. Pugh, 8 N. C., 206: ‘The jury are the constitutional judges, not only of the truth of the testimony, but of the conclusions of fact resulting therefrom.’ ” In the case from Massachusetts upon which the Court seems disposed to rely, the charge of the trial judge was that, “If the jury should find that the defendant kept and maintained the premises and that any part thereof not rented to Campbell was with the assent of defendant used for the illegal sale of intoxicating liquors, and that was one of the purposes for which said premises was kept by defendant, he should be convicted” — -an entirely different proposition from that presented here. The defendant may be a person of humble position. He may be and *649very probably is flagrantly guilty, but in tbe present case be embodies in bis person and in bis cause tbe constitutional right to a trial by jury. If it is struck down in him it is weakened for every citizen of tbe Commonwealth.
On tbe record I am of opinion that this conviction has not been bad in accordance with law and that a new trial should be awarded.
Associate Justice WalKer concurs in tbe dissenting opinion.