State v. . CollinsState v. . Collins
The defendant was indicted in the Superior Court of Nash County for an assault with a deadly weapon on Will Swain. The defendant, before pleading to the bill, moved the court to quash it, for the reason thаt the Legislature had, prior to the return of the indictment by the grand jury, established a recorder’s cоurt in the county of Nash and had conferred exclusive jurisdiction upon that court to hear and determine a certain class of criminal offenses, including the one which is charged in the bill of indictment to have been committed by the defendant. The court quashed the bill, and the State appealed. The solicitor resisted the motion to quash, upon the ground that the. act of the Legislaturе creating a recorder’s court for said county is unconstitutional, as that body had no power to deprive the Superior Court of Nash County of jurisdiction of offenses below the grade of а felony. Some questions in the law must be considered as settled, and this is one of them. The act in questiоn provides both for a trial by jury in the recorder’s court and for an appeal from the judgment оf that court to the Superior Court, where a trial de novo may be had, as in the case of appеals from the courts of justices of the peace. The Constitution of the State provides (in Artiсle IV) as follows:
*649 “See. 2. Tbe judicial power of tbe State shall be vested in a court for tbe triаl of impeachments, a Supreme Court, Superior Courts, courts of justices of tbe peace, and sucb other courts inferior to tbe Supreme Court as may be established by law.
“Sec. 12. Tbe Gеneral Assembly shall have no power to deprive tbe judicial department of any powеr or jurisdiction which rightfully pertains to it as a co-ordinate department of the government; but tbe Gеneral Assembly shall allot and distribute that portion of this power and jurisdiction which does not pertain to the Supreme Court among the other courts prescribed in this Constitution or which may be established by law, in such manner as it may deem best, provide also a proper system of appeаls, and regulate, by law, when necessary, the methods of proceeding, in the exercise of thеir powers, of all the courts below the Supreme Court, so far as the same may be done without conflict with other provisions of this Constitution.
“Sec. 14. The General Assembly shall provide for the establishment of special courts for the trial of misdemeanors in cities and towns where the same may be necessary.”
These provisions, so plainly worded and so comprehensive in their scоpe, would seem to admit of no doubt as to the rightful exercise by the Legislature of its constitutionаl power in enacting the law by virtue of which the recorder’s court of Nash County was creatеd and afterwards organized, and to be a full answer to the contention of the State in the cоurt below. But the question has been heretofore fully considered by this Court, and we reached the conclusion that the Legislature had the power,.under the Constitution, to establish a recorder’s court, not only for cities and towns
(State v. Lytle,
It follows as a conclusion from the fаcts of this case, when considered in the light of our former decisions, that when the recorder’s court of Nash County was established, the Superior Court of that county lost its jurisdiction of offenses desсribed in the act of 1909; and as the offense of assault with a deadly weapon is a misdemeanor, and consequently below the grade of a felony, the judgment of the court quashing the bill for want of jurisdiction was in all respects correct.
Affirmed.