125 Ga. 52 | Ga. | 1906
The material portion of the indictment was in the following words: “The grand jurors . . charge and accuse and present John Lipham, of the county and State aforesaid, with the offense of a felony, for that the said John Lipham, in the county aforesaid, on the first day of July in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and four, with force and arms and unlawful^, being then and there a married man, did have sexual intercourse with and carnally know one Della Tipper, who was then and there an unmarried woman, and was then and there the stepdaughter of him, the said John Lipham.” There was a demurrer to this indictment, which alleged, that it charges no offense under the laws of this State; that it charges the accused with a felony, and it does not appear of what the felony consisted ;■ that it does not charge the accused with the commission of incestuous fornication or incestuous adultery, nor does it allege that either of these acts was committed; and it does not charge the offense of incest in any manner whatever.
The Penal Code provides that any person guilty of incestuous adultery or incestuous fornication shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary. Penal Code, §380. The code does not attempt-to define the offense of incestuous fornication or incestuous adultery. Adultery or fornication committed by persons who are prohibited by law from marrying on account of being related within certain degrees of consanguinity or affinity is incestuous. See Cook v. State, 11 Ga. 56. The code prohibits the marriage of a man with his stepdaughter, and declares such a marriage to be incestuous. Civil Code, §2413. The presentment, therefore, in its descriptive parts sets out an offense against the laws of this State. Put it is said that the name of the ofEense is not set out in the presentment; that it should be alleged that the accused was guilty of incestuous adultery, whereas it was simply alleged that he was guilty of a felony. It is immaterial what the offense is called, if the averments of the presentment are such as to describe an offense against the laws of the State. It is not the name given to the offense in the bill which characterizes it, but the description in the averments of the indictment. Camp v. State, 3 Ga. 419, Van Epps’ annotations, Id. 421.
A penal statute is subject to careful scrutiny and strict interpretation, but this rule does not' impose upon this court a pedantic construction of words and phrases. The framers of statutes are men of affairs, rather than rhetoricians balancing the various shades of meaning of language employed, and words are to be given their-ordinary intendment and effect. As was said by Justice Bleckley, in Minor v. State, 63 Ga. 321, “It is something easier for an offender to baffle the dictionary than the Penal Code; for the former is perplexed with verbal niceties and shades of meaning, while the latter grasps in a broad, practical way at the substantial transactions of men.”. See also Sanders v. State, 74 Ga. 85; Jones v. State, 120 Ga. 188. It is for the protection of the most important unit of society — the family, that incest is pronounced a crime. If a man marry the mother of an illegitimate daughter, and take the daughter into his care and custody, he becomes charged with a. duty towards her. His disregard of morality and decency in hav
Judgment affirmed.