Breisia v. Court of Common Pleas in and for Hudson County

• Decision Date: 07 December 1933
• Docket Number: No. 227.,227.
• Citation: 169 A. 335
• Parties: BREISIA v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN AND FOR HUDSON COUNTY.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

169 A. 335

BREISIA

v. COURT OF COMMON PLEAS IN AND FOR HUDSON COUNTY.

No. 227.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Dec. 7, 1933.

Joseph Breisia was convicted of wandering abroad on a public street and not giving a good account of himself, and he brings certiorari to the Court of Common Pleas in and for the county of Hudson.

Conviction set aside.

Levitan & Levitan and Abraham Levitan, all of Jersey City, for prosecutor-defendant.

James A. Hamill, of Jersey City, for respondent-complainant.

Argued October term, 1933, before CASE, BODINE, and DONGES, JJ.

PER CURIAM.

The prosecutor seeks to set aside his conviction for the offense of wandering abroad on a public street and not giving a good account of himself. The offense was alleged to be under section 1 of an act concerning disorderly persons. Revision of 1898, 2 Comp. St. 1910, p. 1926, § 1, as amended by P. L. 1928, e. 95, p. 202, Comp. St. Supp. § 59—1. Prosecutor is a married man, thirty years old, living with his family at a fixed abode and working at trucking when employment existed. He was observed wandering from the Palace lunch at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the day in question.

A conviction under the act must be for some offense under the statute. State v. Regan, 67 N. J. Law, 106, 50 A. 591. The prosecutor challenges the conviction.

The question before us is whether wandering abroad on a public street and not giving a good account of oneself is a disorderly act under the statute in question. Mr. Justice Parker in Archer v. First Criminal Judicial District Court of Bergen County, 162 A. 914, 10 N. J. Misc. 1159, held not. The decision, though perhaps not binding upon us, is persuasive since the statute is aimed at paupers or those "who shall wander abroad and lodge in taverns, inns, beer houses, outhouses, houses of entertainment, market houses, barns or other places, or in the open air, and not give a good account of themselves." 2 Comp. St. 1910, p. 1927, § 1, as amended in 1928 (Comp. St. Supp. § 59—1).

To arrive at any other conclusion violence must be done to the legislative language, and any citizen and householder will be subject to arrest because a police officer does not like his manner of walking and answering questions.

The conviction will be set aside.