Bradshaw v. Territory

• Decision Date: 21 January 1887
• Parties: BRADSHAW v. TERRITORY.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

14 P. 594

3 Wash.Terr. 265

BRADSHAW v. TERRITORY.

Supreme Court of Territory of Washington

January 21, 1887

Indictment for conspiring to defraud. Verdict of guilty and sentence. The defendant appeals.

Geo. M. Foster, for appellant.

S. C. Hyde, for the Territory.

GREENE, C.J.

This is a writ of error, bringing up from the district court the judgment and record of a case wherein the plaintiff in error was convicted of the crime of conspiracy. He and two others were indicted together for conspiring with a fourth person to defraud, by means specified in the indictment, the person's business partner. He was tried first and alone. There is nothing to inform this court that any of his co-conspirators have ever been convicted.

In course of the proceedings before conviction, exceptions were taken to quite a number of rulings of the trial judge, and to his giving and refusing instructions to the jury; which action of his, if to defendant's prejudice, was corrigible by a new trial, but cannot be corrected in this court, because no motion for a new trial, definitely pointing out any statutory ground for the motion, was ever made. Only two questions upon which this court can pass are before us both of which are presented by the motion in arrest of judgment,-one as to the sufficiency of the indictment; the other as to the power of the district court to pass sentence before the conviction of any co-conspirator.

There is no statute of this territory defining conspiracy. Hence according to section 782, Code, the common-law offense of conspiracy is indictable. But it is contended that conspiracy to defraud a person is not indictable at common law. This is a mistake. 2 Bish. Crim. Law, § 207, and cases cited; 2 Bish. Crim. Proc. § 215; Bish. Div. & Forms, § 285; 2 Whart. Crim. Law, §§ 1337, 1338, 1347-1349.

We have examined the indictment with care, and find it unnecessarily verbose, but not lacking in any of the requisites of a good criminal pleading. As regards the point that the plaintiff in error could not be sentenced until a co-conspirator had been first convicted, the law is not as his counsel contends. For while it is true that the conviction of a single conspirator or even his indictment, cannot be had, or, if had, will be invalidated, in case every one else who is charged to have been conspirator with him has been or is acquitted, or, under circumstances that amount to an acquittal, discharged,...