Logan v. State

• Decision Date: 23 March 1970
• Citation: 263 A.2d 266
• Parties: William R. LOGAN v. STATE of Maine et al.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 266

263 A.2d 266

William R. LOGAN v. STATE of Maine et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

March 23, 1970.

Stearns, Finnegan & Needham, by Thomas E. Needham, Bangor, for plaintiff.

John W. Benoit, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., Augusta, for the State.

Before WILLIAMSON, C. J., and WEBBER, MARDEN, DUFRESNE, and POMEROY, JJ.

DUFRESNE, Justice.

Sentenced to a term in State Prison on his plea of guilty to the offense of attempt to escape from the Penobscot County jail under 17 M.R.S.A. § 1405, the petitioner on April 15, 1969 sought relief from his imprisonment under 14 M.R.S.A. §§ 5502-5508. His post-conviction habeas corpus petition was heard by a single Justice who denied the writ. The instant appeal was taken from such action and is before us for our consideration. We deny the appeal.

The statement of points on appeal under Rule 74(d), M.R.Civ.P., establishes the scope of our review. Petitioner claims the indictment fatally defective as a matter of law, in that 1) it fails to set forth adequately the court or authority by which petitioner's commitment to the Penobscot County jail was made, and 2) it fails to plead any overt act or acts which are an essential element of the offense charged.

The indictment reads in pertinent part as follows:

'THE GRAND JURY CHARGES:

That on or about December 8, 1968, in the County of Penobscot and State of Maine, WILLIAM R. LOGAN, while being lawfully detained in the Penobscot County Jail, did attempt to break from and out of said jail and go at large, while the said WILLIAM R. LOGAN was being held in the Penobscot County Jail for failure to recognize with two sufficient sureties in the amount of $20,000 after having been bound over by the District Court, District Three, Division of Southern Penobscot on November 26, 1968, to the January Term of the Penobscot County Superior Court on the charge of breaking, entering and larceny in the nighttime.'

The statute, 17 M.R.S.A. § 1405, under which the accusation against the petitioner was brought, reads as follows:

'Whoever, being lawfully detained in any jail or other place of confinement, except the State Prison, breaks or escapes therefrom, or attempts to do so, shall be punished * * *' Lawful detention in a jail or other place of confinement is an essential element of the statutory offense of attempted escape therefrom. Smith, Petr. v. State, 1950, 145 Me. 313, 75 A.2d 538. Although the instant indictment states in the very terms of the statute that the attempted escape from the Penobscot County jail occurred while the accused was lawfully detained therein, such general description of the detention without more would be insufficient to make out a prima facie case of the commission of the crime charged. Berger v. State, 1951, 147 Me. 111, 83 A.2d 571. See, also, Smith, Petr. v. State, supra; Duncan, Petr. v. State, 1962, 158 Me. 265, 271-272, 183 A.2d 209. To satisfy the demands of our State and Federal constitutional provisions and of our Rule 7(c) of the Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure, the indictment must contain such plain, concise and definite allegations of the essential facts constituting the intended offense as shall adequately apprise an accused of reasonable and normal intelligence of the criminal act charged and the nature thereof, sufficiently enabling him to defend and, upon conviction or acquittal, to make use of the judgment as a basis of a plea of former jeopardy, should the occasion arise. State v. Charette, 1963, 159 Me. 124, 188 A.2d 898; State v. Bull, 1969, Me., 249 A.2d 881. But as indicated in Duncan, supra, the allegations 'while being lawfully detained in the Penobscot County jail' are not to be taken alone; they must be read in the setting of the entire indictment, all parts of which must be considered.

We do admit that our system of criminal jurisprudence has been the subject of much criticism, because of common law requirements of exactness mandating the formulation of criminal accusations at times in formalistic technical niceties seemingly unnecessary and very much misunderstood by the general public. Recognizing the need to break away from some of the rigidity of the criminal technocracy of the common law, this Court in State v. LaFlamme, 1917, 116 Me. 41, 43, 99 A. 772, 773, declared that if the meaning of an indictment is clear so that the accused is thereby informed of the precise charge which he is called upon to meet, verbal inaccuracies, grammatical, clerical or orthographical errors, which are explained and corrected by necessary intendment from other parts of the indictment are not fatal.

On the other hand, the common law rule that anything material in the description of the substance, nature and manner of the offense must be charged by direct and positive averments and cannot be supplied by intendment or implication was given full recognition, notwithstanding the fact that the accused from the totality of the description of the intended offense could not possibly be misled in his conclusion respecting the exact crime charged. See, State v. Michaud, 1955, 150 Me. 479, 114 A.2d 352; State v. Faddoul, 1933, 132 Me. 151, 168 A. 97; State v. Beattie, 1930, 129 Me. 229, 151 A. 427; State v. Paul, 1879, 69 Me. 215. In State v. Couture, 1960, 156 Me. 231, 163 A.2d 646, this Court held an indictment faulty, which did not in express language or in equivalent positive terms, as in the instant indictment, allege that a mittimus had been issued to authorize the detention of the respondent pending his delivery by the Sheriff to the Superintendent of the Reformatory for Men, even though the indictment did contain the information that the respondent was lawfully detained in the county jail following a sentence to a term in the Reformatory and the issuance by the Court of a commitment to the Sheriff to deliver the respondent forthwith to the Superintendent in execution of sentence. This Court noted the impact of the charge of the presiding Justice in Couture to the effect it could be considered as an established fact, that the respondent was delivered to the Sheriff pursuant to a mittimus, but we said the indictment did not say so, undoubtedly as a result of the established rule requiring description of the accusation in positive terms and not by implication or intendment.

Notwithstanding the strict common law rule of positiveness, our Court has indicated in State v. Charette, supra, more flexibility than the common law concept would seem to permit. One of the objects of an indictment is to furnish the respondent with a reasonable recital of the accusation, said this Court in Charette. An accused has the right to insist that the facts alleged to constitute the crime shall be stated in the indictment against him with that reasonable degree of fullness, certainty and precision requisite to enable him to meet the exact charge against him. State v. Doran, 1904, 99 Me. 329, 331, 59 A. 440; State v. Munsey, 1916, 114 Me. 408, 96 A. 729.

Where the description of the accusation gives the accused a clear identification of the intended offense and readily indicates the statute under which the indictment was found, no further specification need be laid. For such reason, an indictment charging the negligent and careless shooting of another while hunting, without setting forth the particulars of the negligent conduct, was held good in State v. Euart, 1953, 149 Me. 26, 98 A.2d 556, even though the statutory terms of negligently or carelessly shooting are definitely conclusional in character. Again, in State v. Haapanen, 1930, 129 Me. 28, 149 A. 389, we sustained a complaint for the sale of intoxicating liquors, even though without the disclosure of a buyer in the complaint, the fact of the sale had to be read in by implication. Similarly, in State v. Snowman, 1900, 94 Me. 99, 46 A. 815, an indictment was held good which used the conclusory statutory phrase of engaging in the business of guiding without any particulars of the exact acts intended. See, also, State v. Warner, 1967, Me., 237 A.2d 150.

In our recent case of State v. Harriman, 1969, Me., 259 A.2d 752, we were confronted with an indictment for breaking arrest which asserted the placing of the defendant under arrest by a police officer duly authorized to make arrests, but did not state as in Schoen v. State, 1968, Me., 244 A.2d 815, that the alleged offense for which Harriman had been arrested was committed in the presence of the arresting officer. Such factual circumstance was implied from the language of the indictment 'and the said Rodney A. Harriman being then and there in the lawful custody of the said Charles J. Erickson, Jr. (the officer).' We then concluded that our former decisions, based upon the application of the common law rule that, in criminal charges, recitals of the necessary elements of the crime intended had to be made by direct and positive averments and could not be supplied by intendment or implication, were no more controlling, since such common law standards of pleading had at least to that extent been abrogated by the adoption of our Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure. Even though the terms 'lawful custody' and 'lawful detention', as stated in Schoen, supra, may be viewed as legal conclusions, they are not meaningless. They convey to the accused the sense that his custody or detention was acquired in accordance with the provisions of law applicable to the circumstances recited in the indictment. Coupled with the averment that the arrest for the offense of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor was made by a police officer duly authorized to make arrests, the statement, that at the time of breaking arrest the defendant was in the lawful custody of the officer, by indirection and implication necessarily supplied the fact that the offense had been committed in the presence of the arresting officer. The defendant could not have been misled and the identity of the offense charged was...