Court Opinion

ID: 9551053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:47:06.487453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:58.000970
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, J.,
dissenting.
In an article by Eollin Perkins in 11 Iowa L Eev 297 (1926) entitled “Absurdities in Criminal Proced*548lire,” the author prefaces his thesis with a description of the ancient practice of trial by fire and trial by water. He then concludes that “our criminal trials today are conducted with almost as much emphasis upon form and ceremony as were the ancient trials by ordeal.” The result is, as he puts it, the “sacrifice of justice upon the altar of formalism.”①
The majority opinion participates in this sacrificial rite. I have the same criticism here as I expressed in the dissent in State v. Russell where this court held that there was a material variance between the proof of theft of a steer and an indictment charging the theft of a heifer.② There I urged, unsuccessfully, that we discard the hypertechnieal rules of criminal procedure and adopt an enlightened view in the administration of criminal law. I again urge it in disposing of the present case.
The sufficiency of an indictment should be tested against the purposes it is intended to serve. The principal purposes of the indictment are (1) to inform the accused of the charge against him so that he may adequately prepare his defense; (2) to enable him to answer a second charge for the same crime by pointing to the specific conduct for which he was previously tried.③
*549The indictment in the present case meets these requirements. Anyone capable of reading the English language would have no difficulty understanding that the indictment in this case not only charges George B. Mims with the crime of attempting to obtain money by false pretenses, but specifically designates the conduct which makes up the elements of the crime. The indictment recites that defendant insured his goods with the Allstate Insurance Company; that on a specified date he did “feloniously and with intent to injure and defraud make and file with the said Allstate Insurance Company * * * a certain proof of loss,” and that “the said proof of loss then and there made was neither good and valid but was false and fraudulent, all of which he, the said George B. Mims, then and there well knew, * * *.” The indictment further charges that “by means of which false statements and representations and false and fraudulent proof of loss, the said George B. Mims did then and there unlawfully and feloniously attempt to obtain from the said Allstate Insurance Company * * * the sum of $2,320.01.” The foregoing portions of the indictment are sufficient to charge the crime of attempting to obtain money hy false pretenses. Defendant is informed of the time of the alleged crime, the person from whom the defendant attempted to obtain the money, the amount of money he attempted to obtain, the specific instrumentality (proof of loss) by which he attempted to obtain it, the criminal intent, and the scheme by which defendant attempted to obtain the money, i.e., by falsely claiming in the proof of loss the amount of $2,320.01 more than the actual loss. What more does defendant need to know to prepare his defense ?
The majority opinion states that “[n]owhere in the indictment is there found an allegation that the de*550fendant made a false statement of the amount of his loss or that the statement that he did make showed a loss in excess of that which he actually sustained.” This strikes me as a startling conclusion in light of the language in the indictment which I have set out above. The majority attempts to drain the meaning out of that language by denominating the charge of a “false and fraudulent proof of loss” as a “conclusion,” rather than a statement of fact. The attempt to test the sufficiency of an indictment by inquiring whether it states a “fact” or a “conclusion” is fruitless. A statement of a fact is a statement of a conclusion.④
The proper test is whether the statement (whatever it is called) is specific enough to inform the accused of the charge for the purposes already mentioned above. In the present case the charge is clearly specific enough to satisfy these purposes.
The majority opinion contains a more serious fallacy. It applies the rule stated in 2 Bishop’s New Criminal Procedure (1913) §482, to the effect that unnecessary matter which negatives the offense meant to be charge cannot be rejected as surplusage. The part of the indictment which is treated as repugnant to the offense meant to be charged is that which recites that defendant represented that he had on the premises goods of the value of $6,771.15, whereas, in fact, he did not have on said premises and destroyed by fire goods of a value of more than $4,451.14. Admittedly *551the allegation is incomplete in failing to charge that defendant represented that goods valued at $6,771.15 had been destroyed by fire. The only defect in that part of the indictment is its incompleteness. The majority fallaciously converts the defect of incompleteness into one of repugnancy. The statement in question is in no way inconsistent with the rest of the indictment which, as I have shown, is sufficient to charge the crime. The charge that defendant attempted to obtain $2,320.01 by knowingly filing a false proof of loss is not negated by a recitation that he represented that he had $6,771.15 on his premises and that the fire destroyed no more than $4,451.14. The most that can be said is that the recitation taken alone does not charge a crime. But this defect in failing to state that defendant represented that $6,771.15 was destroyed by fire does not negate the clear charge that he falsely filed a proof of loss by which he attempted to obtain $2,320.01. To negate the latter charge the recitation relied upon by the majority would have to be interpreted to mean that defendant did not represent that $6,771.15 was the value of the goods destroyed by fire. The recitation is not susceptible to this meaning. Consequently the rule of repugnancy relied upon by the majority is not applicable.
The judgment of conviction should be affirmed.
Bossman, J., joins in this dissent.

 Similar criticism of rigid formality in the construction of indictments may be found in Puttkammer, Administration of Criminal Law pp 127-130 (1954); Perkins, Short Indictments and Informations, 15 ABAJ 292 (1929); Scott, Fairness in Accusation of Crime, 41 Minn L Rev 509 (1957) (short form indictment); Note, Criminal Law: Indictment and Information: Sufficiency of Charging a Statutory Offense in the Language of the Statute, 4 UCLA L Rev 132 (1956).

 State v. Russell, 231 Or 317, 372 P2d 770 (1962).

 State v. Burke, 126 Or 651, 269 P 869, 270 P 756 (1928), dismissed 279 US 811, 49 S Ct 262, 73 L Ed 971; State v. Smith, 182 Or 497, 188 P2d 998 (1948); Puttkammer, Administration of Criminal Law, supra pp. 126, 127.

 Puttkammer, Administration of Criminal Law at p. 130, after stating the rule that an indictment must state facts rather than conclusions, comments as follows:
“A weakness in this proposition which apparently was never fully realized lies in the real impossibility of distinguishing between ‘facts’ and ‘conclusions.’ On closer scrutiny what has appeared to be a fact turns out to be only a conclusion resting on remoter ‘facts,’ which are open to the same criticism themselves. * * *”