Court Opinion

ID: 9808805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:51:45.695002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:19:10.502918
License: Public Domain

Clark, C. J".,
dissenting: The defendant was convicted of the illegal sale of intoxicating liquor. This is not a continuous offense, but each sale is a separate and distinct violation of law. The uncontradieted evidence was that the defendant sold intoxicating liquor during the fall of 1910 and the spring of 1911; that it was “an almost everyday occurrence.”
*601A former jury found the defendant “not guilty” on a charge of selling “on or about 5 December, 1910.” This jury have found him “guilty” on a charge of selling “on or about 15 November, 1910.” The Court is now asked to hold as a matter of law, without any evidence to support it, that the sale which the jury found the defendant did not make, on 5 December, is the identical one (out of the 100 which the defendant made) which this jury finds the defendant did make, on 15 November.. Two juries have said that the two sales alleged'were not on the same occasion, for the first jury found he did not make-it at the time for which he was then tried, and the last jury said he was guilty on the occasion for which they tried him. How can this Court say otherwise? There is no evidence to justify such conclusion.
The defendant offered no evidence to show that the acquittal was for the same time, i. e., for the “same transaction” of which he is now convicted. The true rulé is as stated in S. v. Brown, 49 Vermont, 437, cited in the opinion of Allen, J., in this case, that “an acquittal bars all offenses put in issue in the former case, but does not bar such offenses as might have been put in issue in the former case.” There was but one sale in issue in the former indictment against Freeman, and it is not shown by the record that it was for any other occasion than the one charged in the bill of indictment to have been made “on or about 5 December, 1910.” It is true that if some other time than that charged had been put in issue it would have been sufficient, notwithstanding the date charged in the indictment.' But the defendant, upon whom rests, the burden of proof, has not shown that the occasion for which he was acquitted occurred on any other date than that charged, and the only thing that appears of record is the charge of that date and a verdict of guilty thereon.
This is probably the first time that a defendant in any court has contended that because the evidence shows that he has broken the law on probably 100 separate occasions and has been acquitted as to one occasion, that therefore he is pardoned as to all the rest, unless the State shall show for which particular *602sale he was acquitted. _ All the authorities as well as the-reason of the thing are to the contrary, and that the burden is on the defendant to show that the charge on which'he is tried was the identical one for which he was convicted or acquitted before. S. v. Ellsworth, 131 N. C., 773; S. v. White, 146 N. C., 608; S. v. Cale, 150 N. C., 805; Cyc., 368.
The offense is not a continuous one, and the .burden is upon him, and not upon the State, to show that he. has been twice charged for the' identical offense — identical in fact and not merely identical in the nature of the offense. The “multitude of his sins” does not change the burden of the proof in such case to the State. Their number cannot be “imputed to him for righteousness.”
“An acquittal or conviction of crime is no bar to a subsequent indictment for the same offense or the same species of crime, on a different date from that previously tried, unless the offense is continuous.” Criminal Law, 12 Cyc., 281.
The general rule, that, in a criminal prosecution where the respondent relies upon a plea of former conviction for the same offense, “if the same evidence required to support the crime charged in the one case will warrant a conviction in the other, the identity of the offenses is established,” does not apply in prosecutions for offenses which, by their nature, are capable of repetition, each specific act being a distinct offense,’ as the illegal selling of intoxicating liquor. In prosecutions for such crimes, no presumption of identity will arise from the fact that evidence sufficient to convict under one will warrant a conviction under another. S. v. Pienfetti, 79 Vt., 236. In that case the Court said: “But it is held that in prosecutions of offenses which, from their nature are capable of repetition, and it might be added, in common experience are usually many times repeated, each being a distinct and substantive offense, this test is not applicable, and no presumption of identity will arise from the fact that evidence sufficient to convict under one would warrant a conviction under the other. In such cases the respondent must show affirmatively by proof outside the record that the offenses are one and the same.” No proof whatever to that effect has been offered in this case.
*603. The State herein, charged a different date of the offense from that charg-ed in the record as the date of the sale for which the defendant was acquitted. The jury has convicted the defendant of the sale herein charged. He has offered no proof tending to show that the two charged were for sales on the same occasion, and the judge properly refused to charge, as requested, that the burden was on the State to negative the identity of the two sales. The plea of “former acquittal” or of “former conviction” is a defense, the burden of proving which .always rests on the defendant.
The proposition that the more guilty an offender is shown to be the more absolutely innocent he is, is a paradox that cannot be sustained either in logic, in law, or in morals. Proof of 100 offenses cannot be turned into proof of innocence by showing one acquittal for the offense on one occasion which the defendant does not identify.