90 Ala. 590 | Ala. | 1891
The appellant was indicted, tried and convicted, in the Circuit Court of Madison county. The charge was murder, and he was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree. The killing of which the charge was predicated, occurred near the South margin of the Tennessee river, at a point Avhere that stream is more than adialf mile in width, and constitutes the boundary of Madison county on the North, and Morgan county on the South. The evidence of the corpus delicti Avas circumstantial, and left it in doubt whether the act charged Avas committed on the Morgan county bank of the river, or in the river and immediately contiguous to that bank; and the State’s solicitor admitted on the trial, that “the murder, if committed at all, was committed on the bank of the Tennessee river on Morgan county side, or in the river.” On this state of evidence and admission, the defendant requested the court to give the following written charge: “If the jury believe from the eAddence that the murder, if committed at all, Avas committed on the Morgan county * bank, then this court does’not have jurisdiction, and your verdict should be for acquittal.” This charge was refused, and the jury, to the contrary, was instructed: “The North bank of the Tennessee river is the South boundary of Madison county. By act of the legislature, the river is the boundary betAveen the counties of Madison and Morgan, and for the jmrposesof this trial, it is an imaginary line. So that, if the jury believe from the facts that the murder, if committed at all, Avas committed on the Tennessee íúver, or within a quarter of a mile of either bank, then this court and county have jurisdiction of the offense.” Exceptions were duly reserved to the action of the court in respect to each of these charges.
Oak opinion is, that the court erred in each instance. We do not question the constitutionality of the statute, which provides that “When an offense is committed on the boAmdary of tAAro or more counties, or within a quarter of a mile thereof, or Avhen it is committed so near the boundary of two counties as to render it doubtful in which the offense was committed, the jurisdiction is in either county.” — Code, § 3720. The section of the Declaration of Rights, which was supposed to be contravened by this statute, came under construction in this con
But section 3720 of the Code has no application to this case. Its manifest purpose is to avoid the difficulty of the definite location, with respect to county lines, of the scene of offenses. Recognizing that it might be impossible to determine, in a given case, whether the act charged was committed on one side or the other of a line, the ja’ecise location of which was not known to the witnesses, though they might, and usually would, know the approximate location of the boundary, the legislature has sought to obviate the difficulty by giving adjoining counties concurrent jurisdiction over a strip of territory a half mile wide, and extending a fourth of a mile each way from the boundary line. To this extent, and no further, the county or district within which offenses must be tried has been enlarged by this statute beyond what are the lines of the particular territorial division for ordinary governmental purposes.
The statute is of that character which ought not to be extended beyond its letter. Its purpose, moreover, does not require that it should be so extended in any case, even if it were an enactment in which express terms could be controlled by a general intent inferable from its subject-matter and context, which it is not. Every term it employs may be filled, and every purpose which actuated its passage may be fully effectuated, by confining its operation strictly to territory which is within one quarter of a mile of the actual boundary between two or more counties. It contains no exceptional provision with reference to the computation of this distance, where the bank of a stream constitutes the county line. There is nothing in its language, or in its purview, which would require or admit of the stream being considered a mere imaginary line of no width, or breadth, or substantive existence; or of the initial point of the computation being on the opposite side of the stream, and thus itself a quarter of a mile, or a mile, or ten, depending on its width, from the real and only county boundary.
Reversed and remanded.