Commonwealth v. Evaul
| Decision Date | 10 September 1924 |
| Citation | 5 D.&C. 105 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Evaul. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
This is a motion to quash a bill of indictment. Joel Evaul, the defendant, is charged with involuntary manslaughter in causing the death of James K. Diehl by the negligent operation of an automobile. The indictment sets forth that the accident in which the fatal injuries were received happened on Oct. 28, 1921, and that Diehl died as a result of the injuries on Oct. 30, 1922, one year and two days after they were inflicted. The defendant invokes the "year and a day rule," and contends that the indictment is defective on its face, as it discloses that death occurred more than a year and a day after the receipt of the fatal injuries.
This raises the single question whether the rule that to constitute the crime of murder death must occur within 366 days of the receipt of the fatal stroke is applicable to all forms of homicide, including involuntary manslaughter. To determine this question we must consider briefly the origin and nature of the rule. It would seem that the more modern text-book writers upon the subject assume the rule to have been applied generally at common law to all forms of unlawful homicide. Wharton, in his work on Homicide (3rd ed.), chap. 111, § 18, page 19, says, in his discussion of homicide in general, that: "By the English common law, the death must have occurred within a year and a day from the date of the injury received." So, also, Clark, in his "Criminal Law" (3rd ed.), page 17, says: "The death must have resulted within a year and a day after the blow is given, or other act done which is alleged as the cause of death; otherwise, the law conclusively presumes that death resulted from some other cause." To the same effect are: Bishop's "New Commentaries on the Criminal Law" (8th ed.), vol. 2, page 641; "A Treatise on the Law of Homicide," published at Charlottesville, Va., in 1914; 29 Corpus Juris, § 1083; Russell's "Law of Crimes" (1910), Book 4, chap. 1, part 1, § 5, page 690 (7th ed.); Edward East's "Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown," published in 1803, in the part devoted to the requisites of an indictment.
This assumption of the general applicability of the rule to all forms of homicide is not altogether borne out by the authorities cited to support it. There can be no doubt that, at common law, the rule was formulated and consistently applied to felonious homicide: 4 Black., 197; 1 Hawk., P. C., 79; but a careful reading of the ancient cases and commentators shows that it was applied only to murder and the graver forms of manslaughter, and has never been unequivocally applied to the misdemeanor of involuntary manslaughter. Sir Edward Coke discusses the rule in connection with murder (Institutes, chap. 7, page 47), and the only reference made to it by Blackstone is in the 14th chapter of the 4th book, where he treats of "wilful and deliberate murder" after he has already disposed of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Hawkins, who is cited by Blackstone as...
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