Court Opinion

ID: 9812742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:46:50.718817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:18.189888
License: Public Domain

Clarkson, J.,
concurring: I concur in the able opinion of Mr. Justice Connor. In answer to the material part of the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brogden, I may say that this matter has recently been discussed by the Supreme Court of the United States by Mr. Justice Holmes in Dunn v. U. S., 52 Sup. Ct., 189. In that opinion Mr. Holmes declared that “Consistency in the verdict is not necessary. Each count is an indictment, he said, in regard as if it were a separate indictment. If separate indictments had been presented against the defendant for possession, for sale, and for .maintenance of a nuisance and had been separately tried, the same evidence being offered in support of each, an acquittal on one could not be pleaded as res judicata. Where the offenses are separately charged in' the counts of a single indictment, it was said, the same rule must hold, nor can it be inferred that the jury was not convinced of the defendant’s guilt, because it reached different verdicts on different counts. That the verdict may have been the result of compromise or a mistake on the part of the jury, said Mr. Holmes, was possible. But, he held, nevertheless, that verdicts cannot be upset by speculation or conjecture, or inquiry into matters of the character described.” United States Law Review, April, 1932, p. 215; S. v. Sisk, 185 N. C., 696.