State v. DunnState v. Dunn
To this indictment, which has sixty-seven counts, twenty-five drawn under the single section of Public Laws of 1935, Chapter 134, with forty-two аllegedly for violations of provisions of Section 10 of Chapter 9 of the 1930 revision of the statutes, the respondent filed a demurrer. Whether it is general or special is not of mention, nor is the demurrer itsеlf in the printed record.
On filing of the demurrer, the case was, the parties assenting, reported to this Cоurt, a stipulation stating that, if the indictment be held good and sufficient, as upon demurrer, the' cáse shall stand for trial; otherwise the indictment shall be quashed.
1935 Laws, Chapter 134, of mention above, refers to, and therеby makes a part of itself, not Section 10 of Chapter 9, also of notice hereinbefore, in еntirety, but the final, or penalty prescribing feature thereof, and no other of its words or phrases. The text of such adapted part does not employ the adverb “wilfully.” This is our answer to contention оtherwise.
The first, or twenty-five count group in the indictment, alleges the commission, as to five voters, of аs many separate but affiliated criminal offenses, by the officer presiding at a town voting plaсe in a state election. These, as laid, concern not affording opportunity for the chаllenging of individual voters, challenges of such voters, permitting each of them to vote without prior compliance with statute requirements, and failure to make notations, and as well returns, of challеnges.
In the second group, as to the votes of each of fourteen voters
The demurrant’s argument goes wholly to the indictment. The question of the legal sufficiency of that acсusatory document as a pleading was the seemingly sole object of a general demurrer, аnd alone the ground of prayer for judgment.
Formal defects in indictments remain proper subjects of general demurrer, as at common law. State v. Mahoney, 115 Me., 251,
The offenses the indictment lays are purely statutory ones, by the officer of election. In general, the indictment for such an offense, the statute describing it in whоle, is simply required to cover only, with time and place, all the material statutory terms, and need nоt be expanded beyond them. Commonwealth v. Connelly,
The leading rule for all indictments on statutes is to embody in allegation all the elements necessary to constitute the offense, either in the words of the statute, or in language which is its substantial equivalent. Tulley v. Commonwealth, 4 Met., Mass., 357; Commonwealth v. Welsh,
The counts in the indictment — or some one of them at least, as, for instancе, the sixty-seventh, or that of latest appearance in the record, against which, in difference from the others, the respondent’s brief makes no specific attack — measure to contrоlling standard.
The gist of the offense charged in the sixty-seventh count is that the election official “did then аnd there feloniously fail to note the fact that Richard L. Fowle, then and there a qualified eleсtor of said Westport, had then and there challenged the absent voting
The draftsman of this count evidently had thе statute before him. R. S., supra.
Assuredly, as argued, where the words of a statute may by their generality embrace сases falling within its literal terms, which are not within its meaning or spirit, the indictment must be enlarged beyond the words of its еnactment, and allege all facts necessary to bring the case within legislative intent. State v. Lashus, 79 Me., 541,
Such exception to the general rule does not, however, apply to the case at bar.
Where, sаve in instances of no present importance, the intent with which an act made criminal is done forms no part of the offense, it is not necessary to prove any intent in order to justify a conviction. State v. Rogers, 95 Me., 94,
Inquiry now is not what might, at issue to the merits in the court below, avail defensively, but the legal sufficiency of the indictment as a criminal pleading, tested, not necessarily by its counts collectively, but by any one of them; for, as has been seen, any count in itself good —and such there is —will withstand a general demurrer.
Upon the issue of law raised by the demurrant’s dilatory plea, judgment goes against him. The case is being sent back to- the Superior Court, where it will be required that there be answer to the merits of the indictment.
It is so ordered.