13 S.C. 546 | S.C. | 1880
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The appellant was convicted of petit larceny in the General Sessions upon an indictment for grand larceny and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, at hard labor, in the penitentiary. An appeal is taken from the refusal of the General Sessions to arrest this judgment. The question involved is whether the General Sessions had jurisdiction to pronounce sentence upon the conviction of petit larceny. As the indictment charged grand larceny, there is no question of its proper pendency before the Court of General Sessions. It is contended on the one hand, that, under the ruling of this court, in State v. Harper, 6 S. C. 464, the General Sessions was without original jurisdiction in cases of. petit larceny and could not give sentence upon a verdict of guilty of petit larceny.
In behalf of the state, it is claimed that the General Sessions has jurisdiction in case of petit larceny, and, at all events, after an indictment for the higher offence of grand larceny, could receive and act upon a verdict of guilty of petit larceny.
It is unquestionable that State v. Harper stands as an authority for reversing the judgment appealed from, and it becomes necessary to examine the validity of the ground on which the judgment in that, case was rendered. When the court is asked to follow the line .marked out by a single precedent case it is not at liberty to place its decision on the rule of stare decisis alone, without regard to the grounds on which the antecedent case was adjudicated. There are three elements that enter into the authority of a case claiming to stand as a leading case on the general principles of the law : First, the unanimity with which its judgment was pronounced; second, the fact that it has been followed; and, third, the duration of time during which it has been openly followed or tacitly, assented to. As, then, the authority of such a case is distinctly fortified by the next succeeding case, it is obvious that in the decision of the latter the
The decision in State v. Harper was, in effect, that the offence of petit larceny was defined and the punishment applicable thereto prescribed by Section 5 of the act of March 1st, 1870. 14 Stat. 402. That under the proper construction of that act, the punishment in case of the larceny of goods of or under the value of $20 was not to exceed a fine of $100 and imprisonment for thirty days. That cases of petit larceny were, under the operation of that act, within the meaning of Section 19, Article I., of constitution, cases to be tried summarily before a “ justice
The section of the act of 1870 which was construed in State v. Harper is identical with the provisions of Section 12, Chapter XXV., of the general statutes, subsequently enacted. Oen. Stat. 195. That section is contained in the chapter prescribing the powers and duties of trial justices, and is as follows: “They shall have jurisdiction of larcenies by stealing of the property of another, of money, goods or chattels, or any bank note, bond, promissory note, bill of exchange, or other bill, order or certificate, or any book of accounts for or concerning money or goods due, or to become due, or to be delivered, or any deed or writing containing a conveyance of land or any other valuable contract, release or defeasance, or any writ, process or public record, if the property stolen does not exceed $20 in value.” No punishment is prescribed by this section; but, apart from the correctness of the view presented in State v. Harper, that will be presently considered, this seeming omission is supplied by another provision of the general statutes, taken from the act of 1866, (13 Stat. 407,) which is as follows : “Any simple larceny of any article of goods, choses in action, bank bills, bills receivable, chattels, or any article of personalty, of which, by law, larceny may be committed; of all domesticated animals, and animals ferce naturce, which have in any degree been subjected to the control of any owner, of all growing crops, or parts thereof, of all annual products of the soil, whether severed from the soil or not, and of all such fixtures and parts of the soil as were severed from the soil by an unlawful act, below the value of $20, shall be a misdemeanor and considered a petit larceny.” Here the designation of the offence as a misdemeanor makes applicable to it the punishment provided by law in case of misdemeanors. It is clear that, so far as the
The conclusion reached in State v. Harper, arose from reading Section 12, Chapter XXV., as enacted with special reference to the provisions of Section 19, Article I., of the constitution. The last named section is as follows: “All offences less than felony, and in which the punishment .does not exceed a fine of $100, or imprisonment for thirty days, shall be tried summarily before a justice of the peace or other officer authorized by law, without indictment or intervention of a grand jury, saving to the defendant the right of appeal; and no person shall be held to answer for any higher crime or offence unless on presentment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land and naval service, or in the militia, when in active service in time of war or public danger.” It was thus held, in substance, that the intention of the act that the offence of petit larceny shall be brought within the jurisdiction of a trial justice is the key of the construction of the act, and, as that intent could be effectuated in no other way than by adjusting the provisions of the act to correspond with the intention of Section 19, Article I., of the constitution, that such an adjustment was demanded by sound principles of construction. That adjustment consisted in looking to Section 19 as the means of fixing the maximum of punishment for petit larceny, and as that section limited the jurisdiction of the inferior courts proceeding summarily to punishment not exceeding a fine of $100 and imprisonment not exceeding thirty days, these limits were to be taken as the proper limits of punishment in all cases of petit larceny.
The pl’ineiple of the method of reasoning employed in State v. Harper to reach the conclusion just indicated is that the limit
If the design and intention of Section 19, Article I., was to fix the punishment due to the offence of petit larceny, or to any class of offences .to which that crime appertains, that effect would be accomplished independently of the statute, and even though it expressed an inconsistent intention. But it is not possible to. construe that section as having any such intention. It is possible that a law may be so framed as to practically embody in it the language of some clause or provision of the constitution, 'and thus to permit such language to take an effect beyond that intended by its use in the constitution.. In that case the clause
To answer the question just stated in the affirmative, it is necessary to find in the statute an intention that it should be construed as- if Section 19, Article I., was embodied in it. It will not be contended that there is in the statute an expression of such an intent. Can it, then, be implied ? The argument in State v. Harper is, in effect, that there is an omission in the statute that ought to be supplied from some source, and, as no competent source appears but Section 19, that resort should be had to that to supply such deficiency. Assuming, for the present, that there is a clear omission in the statute, the obligation on the courts to supply it is not absolute. If it is a defective omission they cannot supply it without supplementing the legislative will, which is beyond their competency. If it is an omission intentionally, looking to a particular source from which the supply may come, all the courts can do is to follow that intention, and, by means of it, supply such omission.
But the conclusive view of this subject is that there is no omission in the statute. At the time of the passage of the act conferring jurisdiction in cases of petit larceny on trial justices, that offence was defined by the statute law as a misdemeanor, and certain penalties attached to it. The measure of punishment prescribed was in excess of that within the competency of trial justices under Section 19, Article I. If it had been the inten
It is said that there was a clear intent that trial justices should take jurisdiction, and that could not be unless the measure of punishment, as thus fixed by law, should be reduced. On the other hand, as we have seen, there was an equally clear intention that the antecedent statute penalties should not be reduced, evidenced, as we have seen in the first place, by failing to repeal the previous law; and, in the second place, by re-enacting it side by side with the act conferring jurisdiction on trial justices. How this incongruity is to be explained, is matter of speculative opinion merely; possibly it was thought that Section 19 was a mere-limitation upon the power of punishment by trial justices and not a strict test of their jurisdiction, and thus, practically, two grades might exist in the offence of petit larceny — one dependent on the statute, and the other on the measure of punishment within the competency bf trial justices. This matter we cannot determine, but it is clear that we cannot raise an implication in favor of embodying the provisions of Section 19 in the statute without violating a much clearer implication — that they intended to leave standing the measure of punishment prescribed by the antecedent statute. This is conclusive of the question whether any ground exists in the intention of the statute for reading Section 19 in pari materia^with it as part of the expressed will of the legislature.
It is clear that the trial justices have, by Section 19, Article I., no exclusive jurisdiction of cases of petit larceny, and thus there is no ground for excluding the jurisdiction of the Court of General Sessions.
The judgment of the Court of General Sessions must be-affirmed and the appeal dismissed.