54 P. 184 | Or. | 1898
delivered the opinion.
The defendant, having been convicted for compounding and agreeing to conceal a crime for reward, by receiving and accepting, on July 18,1897, while a police officer of Baker City, the sum of $5 from the keeper of a bawdy house, under a promise and agreement that such payment would protect her from prosecution for one month, brings the case here on appeal, assigning error of the trial court in sustaining the objection of the state to evidence offered by the defense, and in refusing to give cer
The second and third assignments of error relate to the refusal of the court to permit the defendant to show that prior to the time he received the money of the prosecutrix he had been directed by the chief of police to make such collections, and that two or three days after he received the money he turned it over to his superior officer. But there was no error in the ruling on either of these points. If the defendant, as the jury found, corruptly exacted a sum of money from the prosecutrix upon his agreeing to conceal her crime and not to prosecute or give evidence against her, he is guilty under the statute, although he retained no part of the consideration (State v. Ruthven, 58 Iowa, 121, 12 N. W. 235 ) , and it would be no defense that he was acting under instructions of another.
And finally it is claimed that the statute under which the defendant was indicted does not apply to the compounding or concealing of crimes in violation of city ordinances. But there is no such question in the record. The general laws of the state make it a crime to keep or set up a bawdy house (Hill’s Ann. Laws, § 1867) and there is no intimation in the record that the defendant was not indicted for compounding, or agreeing not to punish or give evidence against the prosecutrix for a violation of that statute. Finding no error in the record, the judgment of the court below is affirmed.
Aeeirmed .