Court Opinion

ID: 9687797
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:49:27.322412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:23.008841
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Justice.
The writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals was granted and on a studious consideration of the case the judgment of that court will be ordered affirmed.
The opinion of the 'Court of Appeals impresses us as such an apodictical application of the fundamental principle of all free governments that the law secures to every person who is brought to trial on a charge of crime that the acts which constitute his alleged guilt shall be set forth with reasonable certainty in the indictment he is called upon to plead to, that, except for the urgent argument of counsel and the dissenting opinion, further elaboration would seem a redundancy.
Indictments must always conform to the mandates of our organic law. The emphasis in our cases “that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused has the right * * * to demand the nature and cause of the accusation” now § 6 of the Constitution of 1901 — is not meaningless tautology, but one of the-cornerstones of our Bill of Rights. As was observed by the late lamented Mr. Justice Brown in Spooney v. State, 217 Ala. 219, 222-223, 115 So. 308, 312;
“ ‘ * * * It is but an expression of the fundamental principle that inspired civilized man to form a government, the ultimate purpose of which is to protect the individual in working out his destiny, and finds expression in. our Constitution in these words : “That in all criminal prosecutions the accused has a right to be heard by himself and counsel, or either; * * * and he shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, except by due process of law.” * * * Constitution of Alabama 1901, §§ 6, 13. * * *
“ 'The manifest purposes of the quoted constitutional provisions, where life, liberty, and property are affected, are to secure the citizen against the arbitrary action of those in authority, and to place him under the protection of the law.’ * * * ”
And that provision and the others of our Bill of Rights “are to be largely and liberally construed in favor of the citizen.” Dorman v. State, 34 Ala. 216, 238.
We are further restrained in this case by the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The following utterances by our Federal courts are pertinent: “No principle of procedural due process is more clearly established than that notice of the specific charge, and a chance to be heard in a trial of the issues raised by that charge, if desired, are among the constitutional rights of every accused in a criminal proceeding in all courts, state or federal.” Cole v. State of Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196, 201, 68 S.Ct. 514, 517, 92 L.Ed. 644. “The petitioner charged that he had been denied any real notice of the true nature of the charge against him, the first and most universally recognized requirement of due process * * *.” Smith v. O’Grady, Warden, 312 U.S. 329, 334, 61 S.Ct. 572, 574, 85 L.Ed. 859. “An intelligent and full understanding by the accused of the charge against him is a first requirement of due process.” Bergen v. United States, 8 Cir., 145 F.2d 181, 187.
Regardless of some ill-considered, loose expressions in some of the cases, the law *470is and always has been that it is not enough to charge against a defendant a mere legal conclusion as justly inferential from facts not set out in the indictment. United States v. Almeida, 24 Fed.Cas. pages 775, 776, No. 14,433.
, “In order to properly inform the accused of the ‘nature and cause of the accusation,’ within the meaning of the constitution, and of the rules of the common law, a little thought will make it plain,.-not only to the legal, but to all other educated, minds, that not only must all the- elements of the'offense be stated in' thé indictment, but that also they must be .stated with clearness and certainty,' and with a sufficient degree of particularity to. identify, the transaction to' which the indictment relates as to place, persons,'things, and other details. The accused must receive sufficient information to enable him to reasonably understand, not only the nature of the offense, but the particular act or acts touching which he must be prepared with his proof; and when his liberty, and. perhaps his life, are at stake, he is not to be, left so scantily informed, as to cause him to rest his defense .upon the hypothesis that he is charged with a certain act or series of, acts, with the hazard of being surprised by proofs on the part of the prosecution of an entirely. different act or series, of acts, at least so far as such surprise can be avoided by reasonable particularity and fullness of description of the alleged offense.” (Italics supplied.) United States v. Potter, 1 Cir., 56 F. 83, 89.
See also Williams v. State, 12 Tex.App. 395.
The two counts of the' indictment under consideration are numbers 5 and 6, as follows :
“Count 5: The Grand Jury of said County further charge that, before the finding of this indictment, Lewis R. Gayden, alias L. Ruben Gayden, whose name is to the Grand Jury otherwise unknown, did obtain a ¡narcotic drug, to-wit : . opium, by. fraud,-, .deceit, misrep-reseñtatibn or subterfuge, or by the forgery or alteration of a prescription or written order, or by the concealment of a material fact, or by the use of a false name or the giving of a false address;
“Count 6: The Grand Jury of said County further charge that, before the ■finding of this indictment, Lewis R. Gayden, alias L. Ruben Gayden, whose name is to the Grand Jury otherwise unknown, did obtain a narcotic drug, to-wit: Morphine, by fraud, deceit, misrepresentation or subterfuge, or by the forgery or alteration of a prescription or written order, or by the concealment of a material fact, or by the use of a false name or the giving of a false address”..
For- a better understanding of the question, a breakdown of the various alternatives (eleven in number) prescribed by the statute and charged in the indictment would be useful. Rather than charging these various alternatives in the two counts of the indictment, suppose the defendant had been charged, as would have been possible, in twenty-two counts, or in twenty-two indictments; that in eleven of these the defendant is charged .with obtaining morphine and in the other eleven with obtaining opium. The indictment or counts so charging in their numerical order would be that the prescribed drug was obtained by:
1. “Fraud.”
2. “Deceit.”
3. “Misrepresentation.”
4. “Subterfuge.”
5. “Forgery of a prescription.”
6. “Forgery of a written order.”
7.' “Alteration of a prescription.”
-■8. -“Alteration of a written order.”
9. “Concealment of a material' fact.”
Use of a false name. * o
11. “Giving of a false address.”
*471‘ The effect of the argument by the State and the dissenting opinion is that a defendant in Alabama can be put to trial on the above twenty-two charges without any additional information in any. of the instances as to the acts he is charged with having committed because (1) the charges are in the words of the statute and (2) the crime charged is one against the public — a rather unusual innovation in criminal pleading, in our mind.
By no means do we intend to detract from the general rule that it is sufficient to charge the elements of a statutory offense in the words of the statute. In passing, however, it is well to note that the real contention before us is not that the indictment does not charge an offense, but that the defendant is not apprised of the thing or things that he is alleged to have done in such a way as that they amounted to a crime. Stated another way, it may be conceded that the defendant is sufficiently informed of the crimes with which he is charged, but it by no means follows that he has been sufficiently informed of the acts which allegedly constituted those crimes. As example, if the indictment had charged that the defendant “did commit murder,” he would be informed of the crime charged against him, but no student of the law with the slightest conception of constitutional liberty would suggest that he could be put to trial on'such an indictment against his will. See 1 Wharton, Criminal Proceedings, § 270 (10th Ed., 1918), and authoiities supra. So, a parallel to the general rule that a crime may be charged in the language of the statute is another contemporary and equally important principle that it is not sufficient if to do so would deprive the defendant of a constitutional right. As was said in United States v. Simmons, 96 U.S. 360, 24 L.Ed. 819:
“But to this general rule there is the qualification, fundamental in the law of criminal procedure, that the accused must be apprised by the indictment, with reasonable certainty, of the nature of the accusation against him, to the end that he may prepare his defence, and plead the judgment as a bar to any subsequent prosecution' for the same •■•offence. An indictment not so framed is defective, although it may follow the language of the statute.”
The following statements illustrate when an indictment may and may not properly be drawn in the words of the statute: “Undoubtedly, the language of the statute may be used in the general description of an offense, but it must be accompanied with such a statement of the facts and circumstances as will inform the accused of the specific offense, coming under the general description, with which he is charged.” United States v. Hess, 124 U.S. 483, 487, 8 S.Ct. 571, 573, 31 L.Ed. 516. “It is an elementary principle of criminal pleading, that where the definition of an offence, whether it be at common law or by statute, includes generic terms, _ it is not sufficient that the indictment shall charge the offence in the same generic terms as in the definition; but it must state the species,- — it must descend to-particulars. * * * A crime is made up of acts and intent; and these must be set forth in the indictment, with reasonable particularity.’ of .'time, -place, and circumstances.” United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 559, 23 L.Ed. 588 (this case apparently . decided before the ' practice of using bills of particulars became prevalent in federal courts, 4 Barron, Federal Practice and Procedure, p. 32). See, also State v. Seay, 3 Stew. 123, 131 Danner v. State, 54 Ala. 127; Grattan v. State, 71 Ala. 344; Rivers v. State, 97 Ala. 72, 12 So. 434. These two related principles are sb well understood it' is hardly necessary to mention them except to point out' that there is nothing magical about the words of the statute concerning an indictment charging in that language when a person’s constitutional rights are involved. . . . ;
The classification of the offenses charged in the indictment as against the “public” rather than against “persons” or “persons and property” in order to avert specificity of allegation is by no means persuasive. We have found no case nor have we been directed to one which asserts the proposition that' the defendant is entitled to less (-or no) constitutional protection when he is-charged with a-crime against-the-public. *472My brethren of the minority have evidently been led astray by the recognized rule that when a crime is against the person the indictment must allege the name of the person and when it is against property the owners of the property must be stated. But it is a pure illusion to say that under our cases when persons or property are involved in crimes “against the public” the persons or owner of the property need not be set forth in the indictment. As a general proposition, it may be safely asserted that in crimes against property an essential element is that the property involved is not that of the defendant and so to allege that the property belonged to a particular person shows it not to have been the property of the defendant. But if that were the only office of the allegation it could be accomplished by other means. The fundamental reason, as we see it, that the names of persons must be alleged in these two instances is not by reason of any magical classification of the offenses, but because by the very nature of the crimes it is generally necessary to make such allegations in order to inform the defendant of the acts he is charged with having committed.
To say, as does the minority opinion, that less specificity of allegation is required where the indictment charges a so-called “public offense” than an offense against “persons” or “persons and property” is, to our minds, a complete non sequitur of the constitutional mandate that every defendant is entitled to know with reasonable certainty the nature and cause of the accusation he is to defend against.
The theory is illustrated in one of our Code sections. Section 245, Title 15, provides in substance that when an offense has been committed upon or in relation to quasi public property or belongs to an association or collection of individuals, the indictment need not allege the ownership, but the property must at least be described by the name by which it is commonly known “or in any other manner which may sufficiently identify the property
Likewise apposite is the holding in Grattan v. State, 71 Ala. 344, where the indict-jnent merely charged the , defendant did “unlawfully and knowingly buy cotton in the seed.” The court held:
“In our judgment, the ownership of the cotton alleged to have been purchased by the defendant should have been averred, or else the person from whom the purchase was made should have been stated.
“ * * * An averment of ownership, in our judgment, is just as essential to certainty in this case, as in that of receiving stolen goods, burglary, arson, or larceny. A just regard for the analogies of the law of pleading, in the absence from the Code of a special form, therefore, requires it; or else there should have been an averment of the name of the person from whom the commodity was purchased. Either would be sufficient to obviate any objection based upon a want of certainty in the statement of the offense charged in the indictment. * * * ” Ala. at pages 347-348.
Thus it seems that the rule requiring the allegation of the name of the owner of the property was intended to inform the defendant rather than to satisfy formalism. Though steadfastly maintaining that the classification of offenses is immaterial with reference to definiteness in an indictment, the essential being that reasonable certainty" of allegation is required in all cases, it is to be noted that the crime charged in the Grattan case is more in the nature of an offense against the “public” rather than one against “property” or “persons.”
In Rivers v. State, 97 Ala. 72, 12 So. 434, it was charged that the defendant offered one Warren three dollars in money, “with intent to induce or influence said Warren to commit a certain crime punishable as a felony, to wit, the crime of perjury * * Again insisting that classification is immaterial, it will be noted that this is a crime against the “public.” The charge is more certain than the twenty-two charges lodged against the defendant in the case before us. Yet the court held it to .be constitutionally deficient for failure to allege the facts to be sworn to, the person *473or court before whom the oath was to be taken, and the legal proceedings involved and the names of the parties.
The case of Barnett v. State, 54 Ala. 579, involved a charge of unlawfully uttering a paper to serve the purpose of money. Again insisting that classification makes no difference, it would seem that this was a crime against the public. There the court stated:
“It is a general rule of criminal pleading, that if written instruments, or papers which may be written or printed, enter into the gist of the offense' — -if the offense consists in the making, utterance or publication of such instruments, they must be set out in words and figures in the indictment. The most frequent application of the rule is to indictments for forgery, libel, sending threatening letters, &c. * * * In these cases the offense depends wholly on the character of the instrument. The court can determine only from the instrument, whether it is of the character of which forgery can be committed, or whether its matter falls within the legal definition of libel-lous; or whether the letter is within the statute punishing the offense. The character of the paper is not the gist of this offense — whatever may be its character, if issued or circulated to answer the purposes of money, without authority of law, the offense is complete. It is the purpose for which it is issued or circulated and the absence of legal authority for its issuance or circulation that constitutes the offense. If this is its purpose, its form, or its contents, is not material. If a particular form, or particular contents were essential, the statute would be easy of evasion, and the community subject to all the evils it was designed to remedy. * * * So the form or contents can not, as a matter of law, negative the criminal purpose. The indictment should so describe the paper that the defendant will be informed of the facts relied on to constitute the offense and that he may be prepared to make his defense. The indictment in this case sets out a copy of the paper, and thereby fully informs the defendants and the court of the facts relied on as making the offense. It could not have been more particularly described. Any description identifying it, would have been sufficient.” (Italics supplied.)
True, as pointed out in the opinion of the minority, the defendant in the case at bar is not charged with forgery, etc., but only with obtaining the drugs by such means. But in the Barnett case the instrument involved was not the “gist of the action” either, but the court said the paper had to be described. In the Grattan case the ownership of the cotton was • not important, but the court said that the indictment should charge from whom the defendant was alleged to have bought it. And in the Rivers case the defendant was not charged with perjury, but the court held that the facts would have to be alleged which it was claimed would have amounted to perjury. A fortiori, therefore, the defendant at bar cannot be properly charged with unlawfully obtaining a drug by fraud, or forgery, or misrepresentation, etc., without the indictment setting out the facts which constituted the alleged crimes.
It will be noted also that the defendant is charged with obtaining the drugs by “use of a false name.” Section 259 of Title 15, Code 1940, contains three forms involving false pretenses. We note that forms 59 and 60 set out the name used and the amount received, and form 61 sets out the name used and the substance of the instrument used in the alleged crime. The indictment in the instant case does not conform in principle to these approved forms.
An indictment somewhat similar to but more specific than the one in the case at bar was held to be defective under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. Skelley v. United States, 10 Cir., 37 F.2d 503.
The opinion of the minority indicates that cases from other jurisdictions are not persuasive, but proceeds to cite some as *474supportive of its -holding. Simpson v. State, 129 Fla. 127, 176 So. 515, 516, is of no help to that end. The indictment in that case charged the defendant with selling “eight cigarettes containing cannabis, from which the resin had not been extracted.” It also charged that the act was committed on the 15th day of March, 1934. Without approving the indictment in that case, it is readily seen that it is much moré definite and certain than any of the twenty-two charges leveled against the defendant in the casé before us.
The case of People v. Lee Foon, 275 N.Y. 229, 9 N.E.2d 847, is also cited by the minority, -but it hurts more than helps their-cause. The dissenting opinion quotes only the .first sentence of a paragraph in that case. The entire paragraph reads:
“The information sufficiently stated the crime, giving the defendant notice that he was charged with having in. his possession a narcotic drug. The law defined what was meant by a ‘narcotic drug’ so that the information did not have to restate it. The information stated the date, place, and the offense, which was a compliance with the requirement of section 742 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Had the defendant needed more specific information, he could have moved to this ptir-pose or asked for a bill of particulars. * * *” (Italics supplied.)
It is also suggested that we should follow the New Mexico, form which is asserted to be, “that A. B. did falsely make (or alter) a prescription for a narcotic drug.” Í953 Comp. § 54-7-40. If we are to learn anything about criminal procedure from New Mexico, it would seem that a better place to start would be with the following Code provision:
“When an indictment or information charges an offense in accordance with the provision of section 42-607 .(41-6-7), but fails to inform the defendant of the particulars of the offense sufficiently to enable him .to prepare his defense, or to give him such information as he is entitled to under the Constitution of this state, the court may, of its- own motion, and shall, at the request of the defendant, order the district attorney to furnish a bill of particulars containing such information as may be necessary for these purposes; or the district attorney may of his own motion furnish such bill of particulars.” 6 New Mexico Statutes 41-6-8(1).
That a bill of particulars may supplement a vague and indefinite indictment so as to afford an accused due process of law is well settled, People v. Bogdanoff, 254 N.Y. 16, 171 N.E. 890, 69 A.L.R. 1378; Commonwealth v. Jordan, 207 Mass. 259, 93 N.E. 809; Eagleston v. United States, 9 Cir., 172 F.2d 194, certiorari denied, 336 U.S. 952, 69 S.Ct. 882, 93 L.Ed. 1107, but a defendant in óur jurisdiction is not afforded the benefit of such procedure. So-we must advert to the original thesis that if his constitutional rights are to be protected, such matters must be set out in the indictment.
It is but to repeat the axiomatic that due-process requires that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without a fair hearing, but one cannot have a fair hearing unless notified of the charges to be defended against. “Fraud,” “misrepresentation” and “concealment of a material fact” and the other crimes charged are vague terms and no civil pleading could stand the test of apt demurrer if a complaint merely averred “plaintiff claims of defendant $100 for that defendant did take such amount of money from plaintiff by ‘fraud’ or by ‘misrepresentation’ or by ‘concealment of a material fact’ or etc.” Certainly property cannot be of a higher value or entitled to greater protection in the eyes of the law than liberty.
With due respect for the dissenting opinion and the able author thereof, we are constrained to say that it impresses us as more significant for what it does not say than for what it Undertakes to say. No> analysis- is made to demonstrate that the defendant could under our constitutional guaranties get a fair trial under the indictment as- framed. But it is said that the opinion conforms to previous decisions of *475this state “for over 100 years”. In this there is disagreement, but to entertain such a view would be no more persuasive nor sustain the soundness of the theory. Wisdom sometimes drags its tardy feet and comes late, but when it comes it should not be rejected because prior generations have been deprived of its beneficent glow. The able solicitor who argues for the State says that the opinion of the Court of Appeals would commit the “prosecuting' officials of this state upon an uncharted sea full of hidden rocks and shoals.” This is a debatable question, but if so we would answer — if that be the sea of constitutional liberty then let us embark at once.
Affirmed.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and MAYFIELD, J., concur.
LAWSON, J., concurs in the result.
STAKELY, GOODWYN and MERRILL, JJ., dissent. ■ ■ •