Commonwealth v. Richardson
| Decision Date | 09 January 1900 |
| Citation | 175 Mass. 202,55 N.E. 988 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. RICHARDSON. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
J. D. McLaughlin, for the Commonwealth.
D. H Coakley and G. J. Emerson, for defendant.
The prisoner's bill of exceptions states no evidence, while the requests for rulings which he now contends in his brief should have been given relate to the duty of the jury upon all the evidence. Because no evidence is stated, the exceptions are overruled. His appeal from the order overruling his motion to quash the indictment raises the question of its sufficiency, and of the construction of St 1887, c. 435; he having been convicted and sentenced as an habitual criminal. The first section of the statute is as follows: The two previous convictions, sentences, and commitments to prison alleged in the indictment were in this state. The first conviction was at Cambridge in June, 1890, and on this conviction he was sentenced on June 30, 1890, and on the same day was committed to the state prison in pursuance of the sentence. Pending the execution of this sentence he was convicted of another crime in Boston in July, 1890, and on July 31, 1890, was sentenced to imprisonment for another term, this sentence to take effect from and after the expiration of the first sentence; and on August 1, 1890, he was committed to the state prison in pursuance of the last sentence. On July 15, 1898, he was discharged from the state prison, having served both of these sentences under the law. The new crimes which the indictment alleges the prisoner to have committed are charged to have been committed on February 25, 1899; and it appears from the record that he was found guilty of one of them by the verdict, which also found that before the commission of that offense he had been convicted of crime twice before, and sentenced and committed to prison in the state for terms of imprisonment of not less than three years each. The charges of the indictment bring the case within the language of the statute, taken literally. The prisoner is charged with having been convicted twice, sentenced twice, and twice committed to prison for terms of not less than three years each, and with thereafter committing another felony. But he contends that the words of the statute are not to be taken literally, and mean that the second previous conviction, sentence, and imprisonment, to meet the true requirement of the statute, must have been for an offense committed after he had served the sentence imposed upon his first conviction, and that, to be deemed an habitual criminal, he must be shown to have committed an offense after having been twice subjected to discipline by imprisonment, with an interval of liberty between the two terms. In support of this contention he urges that penal statutes are to be construed strictly, in favor of liberty; that all words in the statute must be given reasonable force and meaning; and that the intent must be obtained from a consideration not only of the whole statute, but of all other legislation upon analogous matters; and he particularly relies upon the statement of the purpose and principle of such enactments contained in the opinion of the court in Com. v. Daley, 4 Gray, 209. The decision in that case was that the second conviction, which, under St. 1852, c. 322, § 7, required an increased penalty, must be for an offense committed since the time of the alleged previous conviction. The opinion, after referring to the fact that provisions have been in force by which persons convicted of offenses punished by imprisonment in the state prison were liable to additional punishment upon each successive sentence, says: 'The sole object of all such penal enactments is to deter persons from the repeated commission of similar offenses, by imposing additional and severer penalties for each successive violation of law; that is, to punish second offenses more severely than first, and third more severely than second, and thus, by aggravating the punishment for each successive violation of law, to prevent persons from becoming old and hardened offenders;' and, further, that the principle on which aggravated penalties are prescribed 'is that the offender is first to incur the lighter penalty, and be thereby subjected to the discipline which penal enactments are intended to exert upon the violators of the law, before he can be liable to incur the more aggravated punishment.' The statutes referred to by citations in the opinion are St. 1833, c. 85, cited as chapter 83, and Rev. St. c. 133, § 16. It is to be noticed that the provisions of Rev. St. c. 133, § 16, were part of an amendment made by St. 1836, c. 4, § 17, to continue in force the provisions of St. 1833, c. 85, and also that St. 1852, c. 322, § 7, which the court was construing in the opinion from which we have quoted, St. 1833, c. 85, and Rev. St. c. 133, §§ 16-18, each provided increasingly aggravated penalties upon second and third convictions, while the present statute provides no aggravated penalty for second convictions. There is nothing in the opinion to justify the contention that an aggravated penalty for a third offense committed after two consecutive terms of imprisonment imposed because of two previous distinct convictions is inconsistent with our system of penal legislation. If a person has broken the law for the third time after having been subjected twice to discipline by imprisonment under penal enactments, the legislature may say that such a third offense shall fix his status as an habitual criminal, notwithstanding the fact that his two terms of discipline were continuous. A more full investigation than that made in the opinion in Com. v. Daley shows that the intervention of a period of liberty between terms of imprisonment has not been uniformly a feature of our system of aggravated penalties for repeated offenses, and it cannot reasonably be contended to be an indispensable feature of such a system, if the legislature sees fit to order otherwise. Since the year 1804 a person convicted at one term of three distinct larcenies has been subjected to aggravated punishment as a common and notorious thief. St. 1804, c. 143, § 3; Ross' Case, 2 Pick. 165, 170; Rev. St. c. 126, § 19; Gen. St. c. 161, § 22; Pub. St. c. 203, § 24. All of these statutes negative the idea that previous discipline by punishment is a prerequisite to liability to the aggravated penalty due to persistence in crime. A system of aggravated penalties for persons convicted of crime after having been sentenced to imprisonment in a state prison was inaugurated here in the year 1818, and continued in force, with modifications, until the year 1853. The statutes are St. 1818, c. 176, §§ 5, 6; St. 1828, c. 118, §§ 19, 20; St. 1832, c. 73; St. 1833, c. 85; Rev. St. c. 133, § 13, as originally enacted, and chapter 144, §§ 34-36;...
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