Court Opinion

ID: 9808927
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:54:28.51952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:20:09.999944
License: Public Domain

*726Smith, C. J.
(dissenting.) I am unable to concur in the disposition of this case made by the other members of the Court
The principal offender, William Thrasher, was put on trial upon an indictment in which he is charged - with the crime of arson, and was allowed to enter the plea of “guilty of an attempt to burn a store,” the record stating that the indictment was changed “ to charge an attempt to burn a dwelling house,” which the plea seems to have been construed as an admission of the charge in that form. In fact no change was made in the form of the indictment, as found by the grand jury, nor could there be.
So understood, judgment was rendered against the accused, imprisoning him in the State prison for the term oft seven years, which sentence he is now undergoing.
The defendant is charged with being accessory to the crime of arson, alleged to have been committed by Thrasher, the principal, and upon his trial averred in defence, under the plea of not guilty, this precedent action against Thrasher as in legal effect an acquittal of the charge of arson, and that there could be no accessory to a crime that, under said judicial proceeding, is conceded not to have been committed.
The opinion conceding such to be the consequences of an acquittal denies that what was done was an acquittal in fact, or could legally operate as an acquittal, and that the sentence being unauthorized, was void, and the imprisonment by an arbitrary act of the Court; so that, as I understand, the principal, while he might obtain his enlargement from the illegal imprisonment, may fulfil the term of his sentence, and would then be subject to be tried and convicted of the original felony, and to be punished therefor.
Now the Court evidently deemed the charge of the felony to comprehend the minor and subordinate offence of an attempt to do that which, if done, would have been a consummation of the higher crime charged, and punishable *727as such, under the indictment in its present form. Thus the record is made to speak, since there was no alteration in the indictment, and the judgment was pronounced according to the plea and under it.
While in England, for reasons not pertinent to the administration of the criminal law in the United States, a conviction for a misdemeanor under a charge of felony, in which it is included, is inadmissible in the practice there, and is accepted and acted on as a rule in some of the United States still, yet it does not prevail in many others, to-wit: New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Ohio, Arkansas, North Carolina and South Carolina, where, according to Mr. Wharton, “it has been held that the English reason ceasing, the rule itself ceases,” and that “in most States the latter position is now established by statute.” 1 Whar. Cr. Law, §400.
Now, while it is by no means clear that the attempt, which in fact must precede the commission of the crime charged, is a severable part of the charge, so as to admit of a conviction therefor, the Court appears to have so considered, and acted according to the record.
If there was error, and no such submission was allowable, still the- Court so adjudged, and proceeded to pass judgment. The judicial mind shrinks from the proposition that all this is so absolutely null as to subject the parties executing the sentence to an action, perhaps, and if not, subjecting the accused to be twice punished for one and the same criminal act.
The case of State v. Queen, 91 N. C., 659, is not a precedent, and it was correctly decide!). There was no indictment for larceny in this case, or for an offence in which it could be included, the burglary charged, alleging the breaking, with intent to commit murder, and larceny formed no element in it.
The judgment was, therefore, founded upon no indictment, but was merely a naked and unwarranted exercise of *728judicial power. It seems to me that tlie ruling in the present case strikes a blow at that great principle of pertuiial security which finds its way into all just systems of juiis-prudt-nce, that forbids the infliction of punishment a second time for one and the same criminal act.