6 P.2d 114 | Cal. Ct. App. | 1931
Lead Opinion
Appellant was charged with violating the State Poison Act by forging a prescription for *84 narcotics and appeals from the judgment of imprisonment in the state prison on the grounds that the court erred in overruling his demurrer to the information and that the sections of the State Poison Act (secs. 7 and 8, Act 5994, General Laws, as amended) upon which the prosecution is based are unconstitutional.
[1] The information charges the defendant with the "crime of violation of the State Narcotic Act" and alleges that defendant, "with intent then and there to obtain narcotic drugs, did wilfully, unlawfully, fraudulently and feloniously make, forge and counterfeit a certain prescription and order in writing for the delivery of narcotics, and did then and there utter, publish and pass the same, knowing said prescription to be false, forged and counterfeited, as aforesaid, with intent then and there to obtain narcotic drugs as aforesaid", and then sets out in haecverba a physician's prescription for "H.M.C. No. 1 Tablets No. XX". Appellant relies basically upon the failure of the pleading to set forth that the drug called for by the forged prescription was one of those enumerated in section 8 of the Poison Act. The information quite evidently was intended to charge a violation not of the general forgery law, section
The sufficiency of an indictment or information is not to be tested by the rule of the common law nor by the rules which existed prior to the amendments of 1927 and 1929 of our statutes relating to pleading in criminal cases. The true rule can be determined only by a consideration of all of the statutes affecting the subject as they exist since those amendments. The purpose of an indictment or information is to inform the accused of the charge which he must meet at the trial. At common law, where this information came solely from the indictment, much particularity was required. Thus, in charging murder, it was necessary to charge the manner in which the murder was committed and the means used but, long before the present form of pleading, our Supreme Court in People v. King,
Illustrating the foregoing principle we find that an allegation that the defendant "did wilfully and unlawfully take, steal and carry away the property of J.B. Dalby consisting of five head of cattle, of the value of two hundred twenty dollars", is sufficient to charge that form of the crime of theft which is the obtaining of property by false pretenses, an offense which before the 1927 amendments could not be properly charged in less than several hundred words. (People v. Plum,
[2] The point that the information fails to charge an intent to defraud is without merit as the crime defined in *87
section 7 of the Poison Act does not include an intent to defraud as one of the elements of the corpus delicti. The cases cited, involving the charge of forgery under section
[3] Even where an indictment or information is so defective that a demurrer thereto should have been sustained, still, if upon the trial the crime sought to be charged is fully proved, the case falls within the saving grace of section 4 1/2 of article VI of the California Constitution, and of section
[6] Appellant's final point is that section 8 of the Poison Act is unconstitutional as violative of section 24 of article VI of the state Constitution requiring that laws shall be published in no other than the English language and contends that, while the words cocaine, opium, morphine and heroin are commonly recognized, the words describing other drugs in the same paragraph of the statute — viz.: "codeine, alpha eucaine, beta eucaine, flowering tops and leaves, extracts, tinctures and other preparations of hemp or loco weed (cannabis sativa) or peyote (anhalonium", quoted from the statute in the brief — are not in the English language and the statute is therefore void for uncertainty. Appellant's counsel, with a confidence deserving of a more substantial foundation, asserts that "Several of the above terms having a Latin derivative cannot be found in the English Dictionary." However, on examination of our nearest available dictionary, Funk Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (copyright in 1919) we find that it defines codeine, eucaine, alpha and beta, hemp, cannabis, loco weed, peyote and anhalonium. The only word included in the quoted list which is not defined is lonely little "sativa". But, as the terms "cannabis sativa" and "anhalonium" are inclosed in brackets in the statute to indicate that they are the synonymous botanical names for the English words immediately preceding them, they are not necessary to the interpretation of the statute, may be treated as surplusage, and cannot affect its validity. We might add that even a 1909 copyright edition of Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language defines all of the quoted words except "sativa", "peyote" and "anhalonium", and here in the southwest "mescal" or "peyote" is certainly well enough known to be a part of our language even if it be but a mere spineless cactus. While the presence in the dictionary of the words in question disposes of counsel's argument by eliminating his major premise we do not wish to be understood as holding that only those words which are found in an English dictionary are a part of the English language. [7] When a word, whether coming from a foreign language or coined to meet a particular need of *89 expression has been used as an English word in speech or writing to such an extent that its meaning has become commonly understood by people dealing with the subject to which it relates, it becomes a part of the English language with the meaning attached to it by such use. Thus, even if the word "codeine" were not in the English dictionary its use as an English word for more than a quarter of a century by people buying, selling and using that drug would make it such. The contention that section 8 of the Poison Act is not certain and definite and is unconstitutional is untenable.
The judgment is affirmed.
Craig, Acting P.J., and Thompson (Ira F.), J., concurred.
A petition for a rehearing of this cause was denied by the District Court of Appeal on December 21, 1931, and the following opinion rendered thereon:
Addendum
The petition is largely a restatement of the argument presented in appellant's brief. The argument that no case has as yet been decided involving the sufficiency of an information charging the precise offense here involved is not at all persuasive. As to the case of People v. Horiuchi,
[8] Petitioner is in error in the assertion that the amendment of the information, by changing the allegation of the information that the defendant was accused of forgery to the averment that he was accused of a violation *90 of the narcotic law did not change the substance of the charge. As a charge of forgery the information was defective because it failed to allege an intent to defraud, but, with the charge changed to a violation of the narcotic law (Stats. 1929, p. 380) which does not require an intent to defraud as an element of the crime, the failure to charge that intent ceased to be a defect. Furthermore, section 952 requires that the public offense be "specified" in the pleading. A further material difference is evident when we consider that the penalty which would follow a conviction is not the same for the two offenses.
The cases cited upon the question of the constitutionality of the Poison Act (Stats. 1907, p. 124) are not in point. In the case of In re Lockett,
The petition is denied.
Craig, Acting P.J., and Thompson (Ira F.), J., concurred.
A petition by appellant to have the cause heard in the Supreme Court, after judgment in the District Court of Appeal, was denied by the Supreme Court on January 7, 1932. *91