Garland v. State

• Decision Date: 11 January 1910
• Parties: GARLAND v. STATE.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

75 A. 631

112 Md. 83

GARLAND

v. STATE.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Jan. 11, 1910.

Appeal from Criminal Court of Baltimore City; James P. Gorter, Judge.

William J. Garland was convicted of unlawfully conspiring with others to obstruct the due administration of justice, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before BOYD, C. J., and BRISCOE, PEARCE, SCHMUCKER, BURKE, and THOMAS, JJ.

Thomas G. Hayes, for appellant.

Eugene O'Dunne and A. S. J. Owens, for the State.

THOMAS, J. The appellant was indicted in the criminal court of Baltimore city for unlawfully conspiring with one W. Wallace Elliott, and a certain other person to the grand jurors unknown, to unlawfully obstruct the due administration of justice in said court. The defendant demurred to the indictment and to each count thereof, the demurrer was overruled, and the trial resulted in a verdict of guilty. During the trial nine exceptions were reserved by the defendant; the first seven to the refusal of the court to allow certain questions to be asked and answered in the cross-examination of a witness for the state, the eighth to the refusal of the court to strike out the answer of the witness, and the ninth to the overruling of a motion by the defendant, at the conclusion of the state's testimony, to strike out all of the evidence produced by the state, "or any part thereof, which may be inadmissible." After the verdict the defendant filed motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment. These motions were overruled by the supreme bench of Baltimore city, and the defendant was sentenced to pay a fine of $200 and costs, from which judgment he has appealed.

1. The indictment contains 16 counts. The demurrer to the first, second, seventh, and eighth counts was not pressed in this court, but it is insisted that the other counts are defective because they fail to give to the defendant any definite or certain information of the crime with which he is charged, and because they "are vague and uncertain, and in each of them the object of the conspiracy is set out as a conclusion of law." The first and seventh counts charge as the object of the conspiracy "unlawfully and corruptly to endeavor to influence the jurors of the grand jury aforesaid of the September term of the said court for the said year 1908, in the discharge of their duty as such jurors as aforesaid, so as to cause said charge against the said Marcyz Plaszynski to be dismissed by said grand jury for the September term of said court." The second and eighth counts state that the conspiracy was "unlawfully and corruptly to endeavor to impede the jurors of the grand jury aforesaid * * * in the discharge of their duty as such jurors as aforesaid, so as to cause said charge against the said Marcyz Plaszynski to be dismissed," etc. In the other counts the object of the conspiracy is charged as follows: Third, ninth, and thirteenth: "Unlawfully and corruptly to obstruct the due administration of justice in said court in said cause therein and then pending as aforesaid." Fourth, tenth, and fourteenth: "Unlawfully and corruptly to impede the due administration of justice in said court in said cause therein then pending as aforesaid." Fifth, eleventh, and fifteenth: "Unlawfully and corruptly to endeavor to obstruct the due administration of justice in said court in said cause therein then pending as aforesaid." Sixth, twelfth, and sixteenth: "Unlawfully and corruptly to endeavor to impede the due administration of justice in said court in said cause therein then pending as aforesaid."

The nature of the crime with which the appellant is charged, as well as the requisites of good pleading in such cases, have been so recently and fully considered and stated by this court as to require and admit of but little further discussion. It is well established by the decisions in this state, and by the great weight of authority elsewhere, that the gist of the common-law offense of conspiracy is the unlawful combination and agreement. The agreement may be to commit a crime, or to accomplish an unlawful purpose, or to do a lawful act by a criminal or unlawful means, but in neither case is an overt act necessary to the completion of the offense. Where the object of the combination is to commit a crime or to do an unlawful act, the means by which it is to be accomplished are immaterial; the offense being the unlawful agreement to accomplish the criminal or unlawful purpose. In an indictment charging the common-law offense the means by which an unlawful or criminal object is to be accomplished need not be stated, and in stating the object it is only necessary for the indictment to show that the purpose of the conspiracy is criminal or unlawful. When the agreement is to commit an offense known to the common law, or created by statute, it is not necessary, in stating the object of the conspiracy, to set out the offense with the accuracy or detail required in an indictment for the offense. The reason for the rule is that the crime of conspiracy does not consist in the accomplishment of the unlawful object, or in doing the acts by means of which the desired end is to be attained, but the essence of the offense is, as we have stated, the unlawful combination and agreement for any purpose that is unlawful or criminal. This rule does not, of course, apply to conspiracies to do a lawful act by unlawful means. In such cases it must appear by the indictment that the means to be employed are unlawful.

In State v. Buchanan et al., 5 Har. & J. 317, 9 Am. Dec. 534, Judge Buchanan states that at common law a conspiracy to do anything that the law forbids is indictable, and that: "The case of the King v. Marbry et al., 6 T. R. 619, was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, which is of itself an indictable offense." The same learned judge, after a most careful review of the decisions in England "running through a space of more than 400 years," says that it is clearly settled "that in a prosecution for a conspiracy it is sufficient to state in the indictment the conspiracy and the object of it, and that the means by which it was intended to be accomplished need not be set out, being only matters of evidence to prove the charge, and not the crime itself, and may be perfectly indifferent."

In the case of Blum v. State, 94 Md. 375, 51 Atl. 26, 56 L. R. A. 322, the appellants were indicted in the criminal court of Baltimore city "for conspiracy 'by means of divers false pretenses and representations, and other false and subtle means and devices to obtain and acquire unto themselves certain properties, moneys, goods, and chattels' of certain corporations and persons named in the indictment, and of certain other persons to the jurors unknown, of the value of $2,500, and to cheat and defraud such persons and corporations." Judge Pierce, after stating that a "large part of the able brief of the appellants, and of the oral argument of their distinguished senior counsel (the late Wm. Pinkney White), was devoted to a criticism of the indictment, which it is contended does not set forth the offense with the clearness and certainty necessary to apprise the accused of the crime with which they stood charged," said: "No demurrer having been interposed to the indictment, we would not be warranted in reviewing it here, but we deem it proper to say, in order to avoid the creation of any doubt upon the question, that we regard the sufficiency of the indictment as established by the decision in State v. Buchanan, * * * where all the authorities are elaborately reviewed. No decisions in this state are more highly regarded than those rendered by Chief Justice Buchanan, and we think his opinion in that case is sustained by the weight of authority. In 6 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law (2d Ed.) note p. 587, it is said that the law there laid down has been doubted in a few isolated instances, but that it has not been successfully assailed. It was denied in State v. Rickey, 9 N. J. Law, 293, but this view was disapproved by Chief Justice Green in State v. Norton, 23 N. J. Law, 44, and by Chief Justice Beasley in State v. Donaldson, 32 N. J. Law, 151 ; the former saying that the great weight of authority, the adjudged cases no less than the most approved elementary writers, sustained the law declared in State v. Buchanan, and the same view is held by the courts of Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The case of U. S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542 , is not, in our opinion, in conflict with this view; the prosecution there being under the statute of the United States known as the Enforcement Act, and the indictment failing to specify in any of the counts what right or privilege granted or secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States the traversers had conspired to defeat."

In the very recent case of Lanasa v. State, 109 Md. 602, 71 Atl. 1058, the object of the conspiracy charged in the third count was "to willfully and maliciously injure and destroy the property of Joseph Di Georgio," and counsel for the appellant in that case insisted, as is contended by the distinguished counsel for the appellant in this case, that the object of the conspiracy was not sufficiently described, but this court, in the opinion delivered by Judge Burke, said: "Upon the settled law of this state, and upon the authority of well-reasoned cases in other jurisdictions, we cannot agree that the count assailed is in any respect defective, or that the judgment should be arrested. A conspiracy may be described in general terms as a combination of two or more persons, by some concerted action, to accomplish some criminal or unlawful purpose; or, to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means. It is not essential that the act intended to be done should be punishable by indictment. The essence of the offense consists in the unlawful agreement and combination of the parties, and therefore is completed...