39 Mich. 255 | Mich. | 1878
The information was filed under section twelve of article four of the act of 1873, “to revise the laws providing for the incorporation of railroad companies,” etc. 1 Sess. Laws, 1873, p. 496, 537. The section is as follows:
No serious question seems to be made of the crimiinal conduct of defendant; but whether, it is an act within the statute is the point in dispute. The information contains four counts, the first three of which are intended to charge a completed offense under the statute, and the fourth a felonious attempt. For the purposes of this ease it will be sufficient to give the first count, which is copied in the margin.
This was the offense for .which "the defendant was tried and convicted. It was a gross and probably a felonious assault, but we have not been able to convince ourselves that it was such criminal conduct as the statute of 1873 was aimed at. ■.
For the punishment of felonious assaults where only individual injuries are intended, the common law and the previous statutes made ample provision.' There was no occasion whatever for a provision like that in the Act of 1873 for the punishment of assaults with intent to kill
There was, however, a class of offenses for which legislation was greatly needed; and these offenses are very well indicated by the general terms of the act. They were cases'in which, for the purposes of plunder, or for the gratification of revenge upon railroad companies, or from other motives, equally criminal acts were done which threatened indiscriminate and perhaps wholesale injury to persons engaged in the management of railroad trains, or persons being transported upon them. Placing obstructions upon the track with intent to throw off the train was perhaps the most- common instance of the criminal conduct for which special legislation was needed, but this was only one of many ways in which great and indiscriminate injury might be inflicted, and the statute was made general to embrace all similar cases, and not with any. purpose to make new provisions for criminal assaults which were already sufficiently provided for.
To fire a pistol at a brakeman may endanger the life of a person “engaged in the work” of the railroad; but so might beating a laborer engaged in repairing its track, or any other criminal injury inflicted in a private quarrel. But such an offense is not what this statute contemplates; it has in view offenses which threaten more general injury, and in which the evil contemplated is to be' accomplished, not by singling out individuals for assaults that endanger no others, but by attacks upon or interference with the track, cars, or machinery' of the railroad.
We think the defendant cannot be convicted under the Act of 1873; and it must be certified to the court below that judgment should be arrested and the defendant discharged.
“Cass County — ss.
Harsen D. Smith, prosecuting attorney in and for the county of Cass aforesaid for and in behalf of the People of the State of Michigan, comes into said court at the September term thereof, A. D. 1877, and gives the court here to understand and be informed that heretofore, to wit, on the 6th day of September, A. D. 1877, at the township of Wayne in the county aforesaid, the Michigan Central Railroad Company, being a corporation duly organized under the laws of said State, then and there owned, used and operated a railroad called the Michigan Central Railroad, which said railroad did then and there run through said township of Wayne in the county-aforesaid, and that on said last named day said Michigan Central Railroad Company ran and operated a train of its ears over its said road through the said township of Wayne aforesaid, consisting of passenger coaches and an engine and other cars, which said coaches at the time then and there contained a large number of persons traveling over said road, and other persons engaged in the work of said road, and that one Leopold Dunkel, then and there, as said train of cars was passing through said township of Wayne, in the county aforesaid, over its said track in said township, did willfully endanger the lives of said persons traveling on said cars and coaches-of said road and the lives of said persons engaged in the work of said road, by then and there shooting and discharging a pistol loaded with powder and a leaden ball at the said persons on said train of cars as aforesaid, and did then and there shoot at said persons on said train, thereby willfully endangering the lives of said persons on said train as aforesaid contrary to the statute in such case made and provided.”