50 Pa. Super. 354 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1912
Opinion by
The appellants were tried upon an indictment charging them jointly with a misdemeanor, in negligently and willfully failing to perform a duty devolving upon them as officers at a primary election. Before pleading they moved to quash the indictment presenting several reasons, among which were the following, viz.: “First: The indictment does not show the positions on the election board that the defendants held. Second: There is nothing in the indictment to show that a primary election was held in pursuance of law. Third: The indictment is vague and indefinite.” And “Fifth: The indictment does not charge that the defendants knowingly permitted illegal voters to vote.” The court overruled the motion to quash. Counsel for the commonwealth contend that the appellants did not except to this ruling, but this view is not sustained by the record. Counsel for defendant had asked for leave to file an additional reason for quashing
The indictment does not charge that the defendants permitted any person to vote at the primary, “with the knowledge that such person was not so entitled to vote,” and it cannot be held to be well founded upon the second paragraph of sec. 14 of the Act of February 17, 1906, P. L. 36. The fifth reason urged for quashing was good as against any attempt to sustain the indictment under that particular section of the statute. The indictment recited that these defendants were “Judge of election, minority inspector and majority inspector, respectively, in and for a certain election district, to wit: 6th Ward of Larksville Borough, duly qualified and acting as such at a primary election then and there held, being charged with the duty of requiring each person whose name did not appear in the registry of voters who claimed the right to vote and who was permitted to vote at said election, to take and subscribe a written or partly written and partly
When the thing indicted is not unlawful in its own nature and only becomes unlawful from particular circumstances, the indictment is insufficient unless it sets forth some circumstances which make it unlawful: Hawkins’s Pleas of the Crown, book 2, chap. 25, sec. 57; Sadler’s Criminal Procedure, 259. The act with which these defendants are charged, was receiving votes “at a
The judgment is reversed and the indictment is quashed.