164 A. 380 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1932
Argued December 15, 1932.
The indictment charged the defendant with having violated section 48 of the Criminal Code, (March 31, 1860, P.L. 382), in that he did unlawfully, knowingly, wilfully and maliciously offer and make a promise to give one Richard J. Beamish, who was then and there an officer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to wit, Secretary of the Commonwealth, the sum of twenty thousand dollars, in order then and there to obtain and influence the opinion, award and behavior of the said Richard J. Beamish, as Secretary of the Commonwealth aforesaid, in a certain matter and thing then and there depending before him, to wit, in awarding a contract for the purchase of voting machines to be used in the City of Philadelphia, etc. The jury rendered a verdict, "We find the defendant guilty of an attempt to bribe," upon which the court passed sentence, applying the provision of section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Act of March 31, 1860, P.L. 427. The court might have received and moulded the verdict so as to read, "We find the defendant guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted," and entered it in that form, — for that was its substance. The verdict was due to a misconception of the trial judge, made evident in the charge, that the defendant could not be found guilty in manner and form as he stood indicted, unless the money offered or promised was paid by the defendant to Beamish, which was not charged and of course not proved; but that he might be found guilty of an attempt to commit bribery, under section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Act aforesaid, if they believed the testimony concerning it. The trial judge apparently overlooked the fact that section 48 aforesaid made it a misdemeanor either to give any money, etc., in order to obtain or influence the opinion, award or behavior of any officer of this Commonwealth, or tooffer to give or make any promise, contract or agreement for the payment, etc., of any money or other *572
bribe to influence the behavior, etc., of any such officer. Therefore, an attempt to bribe such an officer was expressly within the wording of the 48th section of the Criminal Code, and it needed no resort to section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Act to sustain a conviction. The indictment did not charge that the defendant had bribed Mr. Beamish, but only that he had offered, that is, attempted to bribe him. Our construction of section 48 is borne out by the reference to it in the Report on the Penal Code, p. 20, as follows: "This section is an amendment and extension of the Act of March 3, 1847, P.L. 217, and the 161st section of the Act of April 14, 1834, P.L. 369. A distinction, however, has been made between the party offeringor attempting to bribe any public functionary mentioned in the act, and the public functionary receiving or agreeing to receive such bribe [which was given a heavier penalty by the same section]; the breach of his official oath and the betrayal of his public trust in such public functionary, rendering his crime of much deeper malignity and worthy of more marked and severe punishment." See 1 Stewart's Purdon's Digest, p. 912, note (o); Purdon's Pa. Statutes, Title 18, p. 5, historical note; Com. v. Cameron,
While the court below should have moulded the verdict so as to read, "We find the defendant guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted", which was its real substance, the defendant was not harmed by entering it in the form in which it was rendered, as if it were a finding that the defendant was guilty of an attempt to commit the misdemeanor charged in the indictment, and it furnishes no ground for reversal and the ordering of a new trial.
In his charge to the jury the trial judge, instead of using the exact words alleged to have been employed by the defendant, gave his own interpretation of their meaning. Mr. Beamish had testified that the defendant had said to him, "There will be $20,000 in it for *573 you if the Shoup Company get the award." In charging the jury, the trial judge paraphrased Mr. Beamish's testimony so as to read: "that he [the defendant] said he would give him twenty thousand dollars; or the Shoup Company would give him twenty thousand dollars, if he would award the contract to that company." In cases of this kind dealing with words capable of diverse shades of meaning, it is preferable that the judge in charging the jury use the exact words alleged to have been employed by the defendant, and not his — that is, the judge's — interpretation of their meaning. The jury are to make their own interpretation of the words used and may be led to give a different meaning to them than they otherwise would, based on the language used by the judge. But the difference between the words used by Mr. Beamish and the trial judge's interpretation of those words is not, in our opinion, sufficient to require a new trial, especially in view of the fact that the defendant took no exception to it, and it was not assigned as error.
We find no merit in the other matters urged upon us by the appellant.
(1) Appellant contends that the prosecution was wrongly brought under section 48 of the Criminal Code; that he should have been indicted under section 1 of the Act of April 29, 1874, P.L. 115, for `corrupt solicitation'. While the Act of April 29, 1874 does cover an attempt to bribe the public officers named therein, (Com. v. Richardson,
(2) Nor can the distinction be validly made, as claimed by appellant, that the Act of 1860 (sec. 48) is limited to cases where the attempting briber gives, or offers or promises to give his own money; while under the Act of 1874 he offers or promises to give money belonging to another. Under either statute he may offer or promise to give either his own money or that of a principal for whom he is acting. Neither statute limits or restricts the proposed bribe to money of the attempting briber or of other persons. The crime is the same no matter whose money the one doing it offers or promises to give by way of bribe. See Com. v. Swift,
(3) We are not called upon to decide the validity or constitutionality of the Act of Assembly under which the Secretary of the Commonwealth was acting or proceeding *575
relative to the awarding by him of contracts for the purchase of voting machines (Act of April 18, 1929, P.L. 549, as amended by Act of June 23, 1931, P.L. 1185). See Glover v. Phila.,
We are aware that there is respectable authority in other jurisdictions tending to support the appellant's contention. See U.S. v. Boyer, 85 Fed. 425; U.S. v. *576
Van Wert, 195 Fed. 974; State v. Butler,
The evil aimed at by the statute in question is the attempt to corrupt, as well as the corruption of, public officials in the conduct of their office. This strikes at *577
the very foundation of government. When a public official, such as the Secretary of the Commonwealth, is corruptly approached and an attempt is made, by an offer or promise of reward, to influence his conduct in a matter pending before him in his official capacity, which has been committed to him by an act of assembly, as was the case here, the evil against the government is the same whether the act of assembly, which imposed those duties upon him, is afterwards sustained or declared unconstitutional by the courts; and if the bribe had been accepted his act would have been equally corrupt, and he would have been equally guilty of a violation of the Act of 1860 (sec. 48), whether the Supreme Court subsequently sustained the Act of 1929 or set it aside as unconstitutional. Suppose, for example, that the General Assembly should impose upon judges a duty wholly unrelated to the judiciary, such as granting licenses in matters never before committed to them, and the Supreme Court should declare the act unconstitutional, would it be contended, if in the meantime, between the passage of the act and its setting aside, some one should give a bribe to a judge to influence his conduct in the granting of such a license and he should accept it, that the wrong done the Commonwealth was not as great as if the act were constitutional, and that either or both, the giver and the taker of the bribe, would not be guilty of a violation of section 48 of the Act of 1860? Our Supreme Court has frequently ruled that a defendant who has been tried and convicted before a judge, holding his office de facto, cannot be heard to complain that he was not a judge de jure: Coyle v. Com.,
(4) We think the evidence of what Mr. Beamish said immediately after the attempt to bribe him was made, to those about him, and in the hearing of the defendant, was properly received in evidence. It was *578
part of the res gestae, the natural reaction of an honest official to the corrupt attempt to influence his official conduct, (Com. v. Gardner,
The assignments of error are all overruled. The judgment is affirmed, and it is ordered that the defendant appear in the court below at such time as he may be there called, and that he be by that court committed until he has complied with the sentence or any part of it which had not been performed at the time the appeal in this case was made a supersedeas.