15 Barb. 541 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1853
This case presents the single point, whether money paid for the purpose of settling or compounding a supposed felony can be recovered back by the party paying it. It was insisted by the plaintiff’s counsel that there is no statute, or principle of the common law, declaring the payment of money to compound a felony a crime, in the party thus paying the money; that it is the taking or receiving of the money,.and not the payment of it, that constitutes the offense. It is true that the statute only declares the party guilty of a crime, who knowing of the actual commission of a felony, shall take any money or property of another, upon an' agreement or undertaking to compound or conceal such felony or crime, or to abstain from any prosecution thereof. (2 R. 4¡th ed. 871, \ 18, also page 875, § 12.)
The offense of compounding a crime created by statute, is undoubtedly confined to the party receiving the money or property, and does not extend to the party paying it. This position
Where a contract is malum prohibitum—merely evil because
The money paid by the plaintiff to the defendant was intended to obstruct, and as the proof shows, did in fact obstruct and put an end to the prosecution of the plaintiff’s son, who had been accused and even arrested for a high crime. The plaintiff was a party to the agreement; he paid the money to the defendant; he was a particeps criminis with the defendant, connected with him in committing an act declared by statute to be criminal, and which subjected the defendant, if not the plaintiff, to criminal punishment.
Whenever a contract is forbidden by the common law or by stat-. ute, no court will lend its aid to give it effect. (Chitty on Cont. 570.) The same author also says that an agreement for sup-pi’essing evidence, or stifling or compounding a criminal pros- , ecution, or proceeding for a felony or for a misdemeanof of 'a public nature, is void. (Chitty on Cont. 582.) It matters not whether the plaintiff’s son was guilty or innocent of the charge made against him by the defendant; he had been arrested on a criminal.warrant, charging him with a felony; while thus a prisoner the plaintiff compounded the offense and stifled the prosecution, by the payment to the defendant of the money now sought to be recovered back in this action. It was undoubtedly immoral, nay, criminal in the defendant tq take the plaintiff’s money under the agreement upon which it was paid to him; this, however, furnishes no legal ground to the plaintiff for recovering back the money. He is too deeply implicated in the wrong committed,-by compounding the alleged felony, to
Orippen, Shanhland and Gray, Justices.]
I have come to the conclusion, from a careful examination of this case, that the plaintiff failed in establishing a legal cause of action against the defendant. The judgment of the justice’s court and of the county court must be reversed, with costs of the appeal in the county court and in this court.