119 Mo. 408 | Mo. | 1894
The relator was indicted at the September, term, 1893, of the Jackson criminal court
The statutory provisions on this subject, so far as necessary to quote them, are as follow: “Whenever it shall appear, in the manner hereinafter provided, that the inhabitants of-the entire circuit are so prejudiced against the defendant that a fair trial cannot be had therein, the cause shall, by order of the court or judge thereof, be removed to another circuit, in which such prejudice is not alleged to exist.?’ Sec. 4154, R. S. 1889.
It will be noticed that the section quoted only authorizes a change of venue to be awarded “when the inhabitants of the entire circuit are so prejudiced,” etc. But it confers no authority whatever to award a change of venue when the inhabitants of other circuits are charged with prejudice.
In this ease the very modest application of relator embraces all the counties in the fifth, sixth, seventh, twelfth and twenty-fourth circuits; one-third of the counties in the seventeenth and two-thirds of those in the twenty-second circuit. If such an application is legal, it is easy to see that a party accused, in order to prevent a trial from ever being had in his cause, would only have to swear against every circuit in the state, and then go scot-free!
The statute is too plain to admit of any such construction ; a construction which, if admitted, would overthrow and bring to naught the whole criminal law. We therefore deny the alternative writ.