69 Iowa 544 | Iowa | 1886
The defendant entered a plea of not guilty, and also a plea of former acquittal. The latter plea showed that on the fourth day of August, 1884, the defendant was tried before one Block, a justice of the peace, under an information charging tbe same offense, and was acquitted. The evidence, however, showed that the information under which the defendant was tried before Justice Block charged
In allowing evidence of the sales of dandelion bitters during the time covered by the former information, and in giving the instruction above set out, the court evidently proceeded upon the theory that dandelion bitters were not stomach bitters within the meaning of the former information. But the evidence, we think, shows that the names “stomach bitters ” and “ dandelion bitters ” do not have very precise meanings. "With what propriety the name “stomach bitters” could be applied to a mixture containing dandelion does not very clearly appear, nor is it necessary to determine. We regard the matter, so far as this case is concerned, controlled by the stipulation above set out. The former trial was understood as including all offenses for sales of intoxicating liquors. It must, then, have been understood as including all offenses for the sale of dandelion bitters, where the same contained such an amount of intoxicating liquor that the sale constituted an offense, and it must, we think, have been
In our opinion, then, the court erred in allowing evidence of sales of dandelion bitters during the time covered by the former information.
Reversed.