D'alessandro v. State
| Citation | 114 Fla. 70,153 So. 95 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Florida |
| Decision Date | 27 February 1934 |
| Parties | D'ALESSANDRO v. STATE. |
Error to Circuit Court, Lee County; H. C. Petteway, Judge.
Angelo D'Alessandro was convicted of possession of tickets in a certain lottery, and he brings error.
Reversed.
COUNSEL W. D. Bell, of Arcadia, for plaintiff in error.
Cary D Landis, Atty. Gen., and Roy Campbell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
D'Alessandro was indicted in Lee county for the offense of having in his 'possession tickets in a certain lottery for money commonly known as Bolita, a further description of said lottery being to the Grand Jurors unknown.'
A motion was made to quash the indictment upon the grounds that it was vague and uncertain and did not apprise the defendant sufficiently of the nature and cause of the accusation against him; that it charged no offense punishable by the laws of Florida; that it did not charge that the possession of the alleged tickets was illegal, nor that the alleged tickets were lottery tickets, nor that the defendant had knowledge that the tickets were lottery tickets, nor whether the alleged offense was a misdemeanor or a felony.
The motion was overruled.
The record does not disclose that there was a plea to the indictment. The transcript contains the following statement 'There is no plea of guilty or not guilty shown by the record.'
Yet there was a trial by jury and a verdict of guilty rendered and judgment and sentence entered. The defendant was sentenced to confinement and hard labor in the state penitentiary for a period of eighteen months. The defendant took a writ of error to the judgment.
In so far as the description of the lottery by the language in the indictment is involved, we hold that it is sufficient under the authority of Bueno v. State, 40 Fla. 160, 23 So 862.
Whether the having in his possession of tickets in the lottery is a sufficient allegation to substantially comply with the statute is another question. The word 'Lottery' is defined in Webster's International Dictionary as a scheme for the distribution of prizes by lot or chance, a game in which prizes are given from a pool to holders of cards matching others reserved for that purpose. It is not a place a house, or a shelter; it is a game or a scheme; and the phrase 'tickets in a lottery' is the equivalent of the phrase 'cards in a game' concerning the meaning of which there exists little or no doubt.
Section 7667, Comp. Gen. Laws 1927, denounces an offense of which there are many phases....
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Knight v. State ex rel. Moore, 1 and B
...bingo); see Sanders' Brief at 4 (contending that the definition of "lottery" does not contemplate "bingo") (citing D'Alessandro v. State, 114 Fla. 70, 153 So. 95, 96 (1934)). The operators add that this Court has distinguished between "common forms of gambling [which] are ... innocuous when......
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Greater Loretta Imp. Ass'n v. State ex rel. Boone
...that which he risks.' This, of course, is the classic definition of a lottery. This definition was again approved in D'Alessandro v. State, 114 Fla. 70, 153 So. 95 (1934), the year before While not strictly essential for the disposition of this case, this Court ought to lay at rest at this ......
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Smith v. United States, 7305.
...164 U.S. 676, 17 S.Ct. 219, 41 L.Ed. 595; Francis v. United States, 188 U.S. 375, 23 S.Ct. 334, 47 L.Ed. 508. And see D'Alessandro v. State, 114 Fla. 70, 153 So. 95; Stewart v. State, 114 Fla. 544, 154 So. 322. But in this instance the coupling of the old with the new could not have influen......
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