Ex parte Lucas
| Decision Date | 08 March 1926 |
| Docket Number | A-5962. |
| Citation | 243 P. 990,33 Okla.Crim. 407 |
| Parties | Ex parte LUCAS. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma |
Syllabus by the Court.
Ambiguous statutes only are subject to judicial construction, and where a statute is ambiguous, it is the duty of the courts to sustain such statute if the legislative purpose and the intent of the act can be definitely ascertained and certainly defined by judicial construction; otherwise it must be declared a nullity.
Where a criminal act and its objects and purposes are fully completed in one county, the fact that an indirect injury flowing therefrom occurred in another county will not of itself invest the courts of the latter county with jurisdiction to try the offense.
Original application of J. A. Lucas for a writ of habeas corpus. Writ allowed.
Mathers & Renegar, of Oklahoma City, for petitioner.
The Attorney General and Leon S. Hirsh, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The petition states that J. A. Lucas is being confined in the common jail of Washita county, upon a warrant issued by H. C Hubbard, county judge, charging the petitioner with murder upon a showing made that the petitioner sold a gallon of whisky in Elk City, Beckham county, to one Claud Mathews; that a half gallon jug of the whisky so sold was by said Mathews and his two companions taken into Washita county and there hidden by the roadside; that one Lowell Owens and two others, together with the three who had procured the whisky in Beckham county, went to the place where the whisky had been hidden and there and near there indulged in a drinking orgy; that Lowell Owens drank a greater portion of the whisky than the others with him, from the effects of which he died of alcoholic poisoning.
The statute under which this prosecution was brought and under which the petitioner is being held to answer a charge of murder (chapter 2, Session Laws of 1923), reads as follows:
"Any person who sells, gives away, or otherwise furnishes any liquor, preparation or compound, for beverage purposes, and which results in death, shall be guilty of murder." Section 1.
The petitioner says this statute is unconstitutional, assigning seven major reasons for such contention, as follows: (1) Because our Constitution makes the violation of the prohibitory liquor laws a misdemeanor, with a minimum punishment fixed as for such. (2) Because it provides for cruel and unusual punishment. (3) Because under its provisions one actuated by an innocent intent might be guilty of a capital offense. [4] Because it creates a major offense, irrespective of any criminal intent. (5) Because the statute does not provide in terms that the liquor must be poisonous or contain some deleterious substance. (6) That the statute is so vague and ambiguous as not to be susceptible of enforcement. (7) That the statute is in fact a police regulation, the object and terms of which are beyond the police power of the state.
This law manifestly is ambiguous, but the constitutionality of an ambiguous law may be sustained, if from its title, terms, and general import the legislative purpose and the intent of the act can be definitely stated and defined by judicial construction. 25 R. C. L. "Statutes," §§ 213, 214, 216; Ex parte Hunnicutt, 123 P. 179, 7 Okl. Cr. 213. Without violence to its manifest purpose and intent, this ambiguous statute may be judicially paraphrased thus:
"Any person who sells, gives away or otherwise furnishes to another any liquor, preparation or compound for beverage purposes, knowing it to contain alcohol, poison or other deleterious substance, and which results in the death of such other, shall be guilty of murder."
So to paraphrase this statute approaches and may in fact amount to judicial legislation. The meaning of the statute must be as above paraphrased, or else it is utterly meaningless and void. In this state penal statutes are liberally construed to reach or destroy the ends at which they are aimed. Section 3563, Comp. Stat. 1921; Parker v. State, 122 P. 1116, 124 P. 80, 7 Okl. Cr. 238; Cheeves v. State, 114 P. 1125, 5 Okl. Cr. 361.
As the statute now reads, if it were strictly construed, one who sold to another sweet cider might be guilty of murder. One might suffer death from drinking...
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