13 R.I. 198 | R.I. | 1881
This is an indictment under Pub. Laws R.I. cap. 508, § 10, of June 25, 1875,1 charging the defendant with having unlawfully sold to one Riley, a minor, a quantity of intoxicating liquor, to wit, a pint of lager bier. At the trial testimony was put in to prove the sale of lager bier, but none to prove that it was intoxicating. The defendant asked the court to charge the jury:First, that proof simply of the sale of lager bier is not proof of the sale of intoxicating liquor. Second, that the jury should not find the defendant guilty under the indictment upon evidence of a sale of lager bier alone, unless they were satisfied that the same was an intoxicating liquor. Third, that whether said lager bier alleged to have been sold by the defendant was an intoxicating liquor was a question to be determined by the jury. The court refused to charge as requested, and charged the jury that if they found from the evidence that at the time and place charged in the indictment the defendant sold to said Riley, he then and there being a minor under the age of twenty-one years, any lager bier, they should find a verdict of guilty. The defendant excepted to the charge and refusals to charge. The jury found a verdict of guilty.
In State v. Goyette,
The defendant also moved in arrest of judgment, because: 1. The said indictment does not charge that at the time and place of said alleged sale the defendant was not one of the persons authorized by Gen. Stat. R.I. cap. 119, to sell medicines and poisons; nor that the liquor alleged to have been sold was sold in quantities not to exceed one pint and for medicinal purposes only, and not to be drunk on the premises of the seller; nor that the same was not sold upon and in accordance with the written prescription of a physician, or the written order of the buyer thereof, stating that the same was for medicinal purposes only. 2. The said indictment contained none of the negative allegations charging that the said liquor was not sold pursuant to the provisions of Pub. Laws R.I. cap. 508, § 39 of June 20, 1875. This motion was overruled, and the defendant excepted.
What exceptions in a penal statute are to be negatived in pleading, and what are merely matters of defence, was quite fully considered by this court in State v. O'Donnell,
The exceptions are overruled, and the case is remanded to the Court of Common Pleas for sentence.
Exceptions overruled.