131 Iowa 635 | Iowa | 1906
The indictment is stated in the following manner and form (omitting the title) :
The said A. P. York, then and there being one of the duly elected, qualified, and acting trastees of the township of Colfax, in the county of Dallas, and State of Iowa, on the 25th day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and four, in the county aforesaid, did willfully and unlawfully enter into a contract with one J. W. Mills, one of the road superintendents of the township of Colfax aforesaid, to furnish a man and team and to perform certain labor for the township of Colfax aforesaid, in working on the public roads in the township of Colfax aforesaid, and became a party to said contract, and thereafter, under, and by virtue of said contract, and while still being such township trustee as aforesaid, he, the said A. P. York, did furnish a man and team and perform a certain amount of labor for said township of Colfax aforesaid, to the value of a certain sum of money, and he, the said A. P. York, while still -holding the office of such township trustee as aforesaid, received from said township of Colfax aforesaid, 'by the hands of the said J. W. Mills, one of -the said road superintendents, of the township of Colfax, aforesaid, under, and by virtue of, the contract aforesaid, the more particular description of which said contract and labor and the exact amount of which said money are to the grand jury unknown, contrary to the statutes in such ease made and provided against the- peace and dignity of the State of Iowa.
(1) The facts alleged in the indictment do not charge any crime known to the law. (2) There is no such crime known to .the law as that charged in the indictment. (3) The facts stated in the indictment show that the defendant has not violated any prohibition of the law. (4) The law nowhere forbids the doing of any of the acts charged in the indictment. (5) The law nowhere attaches any penal consequences to the doing of any of the acts charged in the indictment. (6) The facts charged in the indictment fail to show that any contract was entered into with the township of Colfax. (7) The facts charged in the indictment show affirmatively that no contract- was entered into by the defendant with the township of Colfax.
More briefly stated the questions raised by the demurrer and-to be considered on this appeal are: (1) Is the act with which appellees are charged prohibited by the statute ? (2) If such act is prohibited by statute, does the alleged violation thereof constitute an indictable public offense ? If both of these inquiries are to be answered in the affirmative, then the trial court was in error, but if either must be answered in the negative the ruling was correct.
I. The Code Supp. section 468 (a) provides that, “members of boards of supervisors and township trustees shall not buy from, sell to, or in any manner become parties directly, or indirectly, to any contract to furnish supplies, material, or labor to the county or township in which they are respectively members of such board of supervisors or township trustees.” This we think does, in plain unambiguous terms, prohibit the act with the doing of which defendants are charged. It is true, the indictment alleges that the labor was furnished under a contract with the road superintendent, but it is also alleged that the labor was so furnished for the township, and that defendant received pay therefor from the township. The road supervisor is the
II. Is the doing of an act thus prohibited an indictable public offense ? It is this question which the counsel for the appellees present with the most confidence and urgency. It will be noted that the section of the Code containing the prohibitive language above quoted does not expressly declare that a violation thereof shall be a felony or a misdemeanor, nor does it in terms provide any penalty therefor. From this circumstance it is argued that the Legislature did not intend to brand the prohibited act as a public offense, and that its utmost effect is to make void and unenforceable any contract made in disregard of the statutory enactment. Hu1
Counsel seek to avoid this result upon the admitted principle that the power of one Legislature to enact laws is not limited or circumscribed by the act of any prior Legislature. The application which we"are asked to make of this principle is indicated in the following quotation from the appellee’s brief. “ The court will bear in mind that we insist, there is no violation of the statute charged by the indictment, but, if there were, we say that the sections referred to would not and
Counsel also say that the very fact that the statute making the prohibition contains no reference to a penalty is evidence that none was intended, and insists that always, where the prohibitive provision is intended to be penal, words will be found to have been used of such import. As an illustration of the fact that this is not always the case we may refer to the case of State v. Shea, decided by this court in 106 Iowa, 735. In that case the statute provided that no member of the city council shall be directly or indirectly interested in the profits of any contract for the city, and that" such member shall not vote upon any question in which he directly or indirectly is interested — no reference being there made to a penalty. We there held the act of voting in violation of such prohibition to be punishable under the general provision as' to misdemeanors. The question there, as in this case, arose upon demurrer, and we held the indictment sufficient. The same rule was recognized and applied in State v. Conlee, 25 Iowa, 237. It was also there held that no injurious results need follow the violation of the statute in order to make it punishable. We may also add that corrupt or wrong motive is not an essential element of the offense. The trustee or other officer may have acted in the utmost good faith in doing the forbidden act, and have taken no advantage of his
We know nothing of the circumstances attending the case before us save as they are alleged in the indictment and admitted by the demurrer. The defendants may have had no conscious purpose to violate the law, the violation may have been of a trivial character which could have been overlooked without injury to the public, and the prosecution may have been inspired by personal enmity and ill will, but none of these circumstances affect the question at issue. The act itself stands admitted for the purposes of this appeal, and we are clear that such act is forbidden by the statute and being forbidden it becomes punishable under Code, sections 4905 and 4906.
The suggestion of counsel that the legislative act was intended to operate upon the contract and not to impose any penalty on the officer making it is unsound. If that had been the legislative intent, it would have been easy to state it in intelligible and unmistakable form. The prohibition of the statute is in terms directed against the named officers and declares that they shall not buy from, sell to, or in any manner become parties directly or indirectly to any contract to furnish supplies, material or labor to their township. The language could hardly be broader in its scope or more clear in its meaning, and the officer who disregards its terms does something' more than enter into a contract which the courts will not enforce against the township. He does an act which is expressly prohibited by the statute, and the doing of such an act is by. statute made a misdemeanor.
It follows that, in our .view, the trial court erred in sustaining the demurrer to the indictment, and the ruling in each of the cases named in the caption must be reversed, and the several cases remanded for further proceedings in harmony with this opinion.— Reversed.