Court Opinion

ID: 9865270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:29:47.836989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:15.467512
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Burke
dissenting.
This judgment was affirmed en banc, rehearing granted and the cause reargued orally. Having written the former opinion, now withdrawn, and remaining unconvinced by subsequent proceedings, it would seem some comment is proper, however futile.
It appears clear to me that nothing in the petition, briefs, oral argument, or present opinion, either in reason or precedent, adds a feather’s weight to Shimmel’s case. In fact the opinion weakens it because it admits as established, essential elements denied by defendant. It admits that “the office of the Civil Service Commission is such an office as falls within the meaning of the words ‘or any public office’ ”. If so, what relevancy has the rule of ejusdem generis? That “reduction to writing as evidence” is the principal identification mark of a record would seem too apparent to require the authority of Mr. Webster to support it. However, that the legislative wrath was confined to those whose acts tended to destroy the evidentiary value of the record strikes me as wholly gratuitous and unsupported. The principal purpose of the civil service questions, and their only public value, was to test the qualifications of those examined, hence whoever frustrated that purpose and destroyed that value did thereby “corrupt” and “avoid” the record. The court’s opinion declares that “the thwarting of the purpose of the civil service provisions of the charter is not a proximate result of the acts of defendants charged and proved.” If the purpose of those provisions is to determine, by written examination, the qualifications of the applicants, and the disclosure to favored applicants, prior to examination, of the very tests to be applied enabled the fool to palm himself off on the city as a sage, even Mr. Webster suggests no subterfuge to escape the applicability of “thwart.” Again *603we learn from the opinion that “the acts charged against defendants might all have been committed by them and no injury public or private occasioned thereby.” What of it? Defendant did not ward the blow from the community and he is not charged with inflicting an injury. He is charged with being a party to a conspiracy to corrupt and avoid certain public records. Assuming the unqualified assertions of the opinion, he did so. That the conspiracy may have failed is immaterial. Those who conspire to murder are guilty though no hair of the head of the intended victim be touched. Again it is said that before any “thwarting of the purpose of the civil service provisions of the charter could occur the act of a prospective applicant must enter as an intervening cause and concur with the acts charged against defendants.” In other words, no matter what the conspirators do they are in the clear unless some outsider gets into the game, and conspiracy to murder cannot be established unless the intended victim joins in it. This is a novel contribution to the law of conspiracy.
It furthermore appears from the opinion that certain assumptions and statements of unquestioned fact are limited to the charge of avoiding and disregarded in considering conspiracy to avoid. I think if justified as to the one they were equally justified as to the other.
Finally, after holding that the office is one of those covered by the statute and that after the examination the questions plus the answers would constitute “such a record as the statute refers to,” the opinion concludes that “the unused examination questions are not records of or belonging to a public office.” I am unable to follow this. Perhaps the opinion is its own best refutation.
To sum up, the clearly applicable portion of the statute reads: “If any * * * person whatever, shall * * * corrupt, * * * or avoid, any record * * * of or belonging to any public office within this state, the person so offending * * * shall be punished,” etc. This defendant with others is charged with conspiring to corrupt and *604avoid a record of the Denver Civil Service Commission by selling the proposed questions for a fireman’s examination to applicants therefor. The record discloses that they did those things set forth in the court’s opinion, and no reversible error appears unless it appears therefrom. I am unable to escape the conviction that this defendant unquestionably violated an applicable statute, that by a fair and impartial trial he was convicted thereof, and that he has now been shrived by a baptism of words.
Mr. Justice Bock concurs herein.