Ex parte Woodward

• Decision Date: 06 February 1912
• Parties: Ex parte WOODWARD.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

61 So. 295

181 Ala. 97

Ex parte WOODWARD.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 6, 1912

M.E Woodward was convicted of unlawfully selling intoxicating liquors, his conviction affirmed by the Court of Appeals, and he petitions for a writ of certiorari or other appropriate writ. Denied.

Callahan & Harris, of Decatur, for appellant.

R.C Brickell, Atty. Gen., and W.L. Martin, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

McCLELLAN J.

Certiorari to the Court of Appeals.

The petitioner's adjudication of guilt by the Morgan county law and equity court, under an indictment charging that he sold, kept for sale, offered for sale, or otherwise disposed of, spirituous, vinous, or malt liquors, contrary to law, was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. Woodward v. State (App.) 59 So. 688-690. The application for rehearing was denied by that court on July 11, 1912.

The petitioner assails the correctness of the rulings of that court underlying its affirmance of the judgment of conviction in several respects. The chief point taken is that error of law was committed in the ruling that section 4 of the Fuller Bill (Acts Sp.Sess. 1909, pp. 63, 64) was not constitutionally invalid.

The Court of Appeals is required by the act of its creation to conform its rulings to those pertinently pronounced by this court. 1 Ala.App. 5, 6. In observance of this affirmative restriction upon its powers and functions, that court pronounced section 4 of the Fuller Bill constitutionally valid upon the authority of Toole v. State, 170 Ala 41, 53, 54, 54 So. 195, delivered November 17, 1910, and denied rehearing January 14, 1911.

In Toole v. State the judgment of this court, in the pertinent particular, was, in part, rested upon Bailey v State, 161 Ala. 75, 49 So. 886. Upon writ of error the Supreme Court of the United States, on January 3, 1911, reversed the judgment of affirmance here entered on Bailey's appeal. Bailey v. State of Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 31 Sup.Ct. 145, 55 L.Ed. 191.

It is now contended for petitioner that the doctrine and conclusion of Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 31 Sup.Ct. 145, 55 L.Ed. 191, not only destroys our deliverance in Bailey v. State, 161 Ala. 75, 49 So. 886 as authority, but also requires the conclusion that section 4 of the Fuller Bill is unconstitutional. It must be conceded, because of the reversal, that our conclusion in Bailey v. State, 161 Ala. 75, 49 So. 886, is no longer authoritative here. The question whether section 4 is constitutionally valid must be considered and determined without reference to our deliverance in Bailey's Case.

The act, approved August 25, 1909, in which section 4 is contained, has this title: "An act to further suppress the evils of intemperance, and to secure the obedience to and the enforcement of, and to prevent the evasion of, the laws of the state for the promotion of temperance and for the prohibition of the manufacture of and traffic in or unlawful disposition of prohibited liquors and beverages; to provide for the abatement of liquor nuisances and the seizure and destruction of forfeited liquors and beverages, and to prescribe the procedure in such cases." Section 4 is as follows: "4. That the keeping of liquors or beverages that are prohibited by the law of the state to be manufactured, sold or otherwise disposed of in any building not used exclusively for a dwelling shall be prima facie evidence that they are kept for sale or with the intent to sell the same, contrary to law." The provisions of this act accord with the general and particular purposes foreshadowed in its title.

The act to which this act, approved August 25, 1909, is a complement was approved August 9, 1909. Acts Sp.Sess. 1909, pp. 8-13. Its title reads: "An act to promote temperance and suppress the evils of intemperance; to discourage the use and consumption of alcohol, alcoholic, spirituous, vinous, malt, brewed, and fermented liquors and other liquors, liquids, bitters and beverages defined and set forth in the act, and substitutes or devices therefor; and to prohibit the manufacture, sale, offering for sale, keeping or having in possession for sale, barter, exchange, giving away, furnishing or otherwise disposing of the said liquors, liquids and beverages, the carrying on of the business of a brewer, distiller, rectifier of spirits, or retail or wholesale dealer in liquors, or retail or wholesale dealer in malt liquors, and the keeping or maintaining of unlawful drinking places, which are declared to be common nuisances and are to be abated as such."

Its third section provides in part: "That it shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation or association within this state to manufacture, sell, offer for sale, keep or have in possession for sale, barter, exchange, give away, furnish at public place or elsewhere, or otherwise dispose of, the prohibited liquors and beverages described in section 1 of this act, or any of them, in any quantity," etc.

Latterly in that act a penalty of fine or imprisonment, or both, is prescribed for its violation.

The title, just quoted, correctly indicates the substance of the act of which it is a part.

This general doctrine, expressed for the Supreme Court by Justice Lurton in Mobile, etc., R.R. Co. v. Turnipseed, 219 U.S. 42, 43, 31 Sup.Ct. 136, 137 (55 L.Ed. 78, 32 L.R.A. [N.S.] 226, Ann.Cas.1912A, 463), must be accepted as long since settled: "Legislation providing that proof of one fact shall constitute prima facie evidence of the main fact in issue is but to enact a rule of evidence, and quite within the general power of government. Statutes, national and state, dealing with such methods of proof in both civil and criminal cases abound, and the decisions upholding them are numerous. *** That legislative presumption of one fact from evidence of another may not constitute a denial of due process of law or a denial of the equal protection of the law, it is only essential that there shall be some rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed, and that the inference of one fact from proof of another shall not be so unreasonable as to be a purely arbitrary mandate. So, also, it must not, under the guise of regulating the presentation of evidence, operate to preclude the party from the right to present his defense to the main fact thus presumed. If a legislative provision, not unreasonable in itself, prescribing a rule of evidence, in either civil or criminal cases, does not shut out from the party affected a reasonable opportunity to submit to the jury in his defense all of the facts bearing upon the issue, there is no ground for holding that due process of law has been denied him."

In Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U.S. 61, 81, 82, 31 Sup.Ct. 337, 342 (55 L.Ed. 369, Ann.Cas.1912C, 160), it is said (Justice Van Devanter writing for the court): "Each state possesses the general power to prescribe the evidence which shall be received and the effect which shall be given to it in her own courts, and may exert this power by providing that proof of a particular fact, or of several taken collectively, shall be prima facie evidence of another fact. Many such exertions of this power are shown in the legislation of the several states; and their validity, as against the present objection, has been uniformly recognized, save where they have been found to be merely arbitrary mandates, or to discriminate invidiously between different persons in substantially the same situation. Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 238 [31 Sup.Ct. 145, 55 L.Ed. 191]; Board of Commissioners v. Merchant, 103 N.Y. 143, 148 [8 N.E. 484, 57 Am.Rep. 705]." (Italics supplied.) The court then quotes approvingly a pertinent excerpt from its opinion in Mobile, etc., R.R. Co. v. Turnipseed, supra.

Where the statute is expressive of the legislative power defined by the Supreme Court in the decisions quoted, and does not transgress the limitations for a constitutional exertion of that power, prescribing only a temporary, as distinguished from a conclusive, inference of fact from a fact or facts or circumstances proved, no impairment of constitutional right is effected; nor is any provision of either the state or federal Constitution thereby violated. The protective guaranties of due process of law and of the equal protection of the law and of the right to trial by jury are not infringed by such a statute. People v. Cannon, 139 N.Y. 32, 34 N.E. 759, 36 Am.St.Rep. 668; Board of Commissioners v. Merchant, 103 N.Y. 143, 8 N.E. 484, 57 Am.Rep. 705, cited in Lindsley v. Carbonic Gas Co., supra; State v. Buck, 120 Mo. 479, 25 S.W. 573; State v. Kingsley, 108 Mo. 135, 18 S.W. 994; State v. Beach, 147 Ind. 74, 43 N.E. 949, 46 N.E. 145, 36 L.R.A. 179; Commonwealth v. Williams, 72 Mass. (6 Gray) 1; State v. Cunningham, 25 Conn. 195; 2 Woollen & Thornton on Intox. Liquors, § 923, and notes; Goldstein v. Maloney, 62 Fla. 198, 57 So. 342; Joyce on Intox. Liquors, § 44.

The legislative power being as stated, the real question is: Does section 4 evidence an invalid exercise thereof?

While not a literal copy of section 2427 of the Code of 1897 of Iowa, sections 4 and 5 of the Fuller Bill manifest an identity of ideas therewith, and, for all practical purposes, express them in similar language. That statute, in the particular with which we are now concerned, was pronounced valid in Santo v. State, 2 Clarke (Iowa) 165, 212-214, 63 Am.Dec. 487, delivered in 1855, anterior, of course, to the adoption of the fourteenth amendment.

A number of other states have had, or have now, substantially similar statutes. Some of them are Kansas, Nebraska Connecticut, New York, and Vermont. The principle to which such enactments are referable has been illustrated in numerous instances, other than with respect...