24 App. D.C. 229 | D.C. Cir. | 1904
delivered the opinion of the Court:
The appellant, Luigi Coratola, was convicted in the supreme court of the District of Columbia of the crime of assault with intent to kill one Kosa Coroda. There was a motion in arrest of judgment on the ground that the indictment, although stating the offense in the words of the statute, omitted to state the means wherewith the assault was committed, and therefore failed to state an indictable offense. This motion was overruled, and judgment was rendered, and from this judgment the present appeal has been taken.
There is but a single question raised on the appeal,— that of the sufficiency of the indictment to state an indictable offense; and that question, it is conceded, was decided adversely to the contention of the appellant in the case of Davis v. United States, 16 App. D. C. 442. There it was said by this court:
“As to the second objection taken, that the indictment fails to set forth the particular means or instrument used in the attempt to perpetrate the crime of killing the party assaulted. This objection we think is equally untenable as the first The statutory description of the offense is ‘assault with intent to kill.’ The statute does not require or designate any particular means to be used in order to constitute the offense. The assault and intent to kill must concur; but it is not required that in the
It is candidly admitted that, unless we overrule our decision in the case of Davis v. United States, or unless that decision has been modified by subsequent legislation or by subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the appellant has no standing here. We have no desire, and we see no reason, to modify in any manner the conclusion that was reached in the case of Davis v. United States; and we find nothing in subsequent legislation or in subsequent decisions of our tribunal of last resort that would warrant a different conclusion in the present case.
The offense in the Davis Case appears to have been committed in the year 1899 or prior thereto; and the indictment for it was found under §§ 1144 and 1150 of the Revised Statutes of the United States for the District of Columbia, then in force. It was decided in this court in May of 1900. The Revised Statutes were superseded by the Code in January of 1902; and § 803 and subsequent sections of the Code took the place of §§ 1144 and 1150 of the Revised Statutes. It is argued that the new enactments are such as to require a modification of the ruling in the Davis Case. But we find no change whatever in these new enactments that requires such modification. On the contrary, with the exception of a slight modification of the punishment, we regard the new law as identical in all material effects, so far as the case before us is concerned, with that which was in force when the Davis Case was decided.
Sections 1144 and 1150 of the Revised Statutes, omitting therefrom such matters as are not pertinent to the issue before us, provided that every person convicted in the supreme court
This is not a case for the application of the maxim of Noscitur a sociis, which requires that meaning should be given to words and terms and provisions of law in accordance with the context in which they are found; nor is it a case where the generality of one clause of an enactment should be restricted in consequence of the enumeration in immediate connection therewith of specified particulars. Unless we are prepared to go to the extreme and most absurd length of holding that, because the framers of the Code, after the general provision in regard to all attempts to kill, followed it up with a specification of the special attempt to kill by the mingling of poison with food, drink, or medicine, therefore this last offense so specified is now, under the Code, the only form of an attempt to kill which is punishable, the doctrine sought to be applied here on behalf of.
It is also contended on behalf of the appellant that the decision in the case of Davis v. United States should be qualified in view of later decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. No such later decisions that have any bearing upon the question raised here are cited; and we do not find any. The only late case in that court that is cited as having such a bearing is the case of Ledbetter v. United States, 170 U. S. 606, 42 L. ed. 1162, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 774. But that case has no such effect, but rather the contrary. Nor was it a later decision than the Davis Case. It was, in fact, decided a year or two before the Davis Case, and in the consideration of that case was given the effect that was due to it.
We find no error in the record of this case; and the judgment appealed from must therefore be affirmed. And it is so ordered.
Affirmed.