Kinnane v. State

• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Williams
• Citation: Kinnane v. State, 178 S.W. 439 (Tenn. 1915)
• Decision Date: 19 July 1915
• Parties: KINNANE v. STATE.

178 S.W. 439

KINNANE v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

July 19, 1915.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Lauderdale County; S. J. Everett, Judge.

T. B. Kinnane was convicted of selling intoxicating liquors without a license, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Steele & Steele, of Ripley, and E. L. Westbrook, of Jonesboro, Ark., for appellant. The Assistant Attorney General, for the State.

WILLIAMS, J.

Plaintiff in error, Kinnane, was convicted on a charge of selling intoxicating liquor without a license in violation of statute, and has appealed and assigned errors.

Kinnane was keeper of a barroom on a steamboat, the Harry Lee, which plied the Mississippi river from Memphis northward to Ashport, in Lauderdale county.

There was proof tending to show that on one of its trips the boat made its regular landing at Ashport, and that a number of persons went aboard for the purpose, on their part, of making purchases of whisky, among them James Wilson, a witness for the prosecution; that they were received by the boat's management, not as good-faith passengers, but with the confessed intention, on the part of those operating the boat, including Kinnane, of selling them intoxicating liquors; that on approaching the landing at Ashport, the barroom was locked; that the boat was run out into the river and beyond the Tennessee boundary line, when the barroom was opened, a quart of whisky passed in exchange for money to Wilson so on board, whereupon the boat looped back to the Tennessee shore, landed near the point from which it started, and there Wilson, with his purchase, debarked.

Acts 1899, c. 161, to which the indictment is referable, provides:

"That any person or persons selling or aiding in selling in any way whatever, intoxicating liquors, without license required by law, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars, and imprisonment in the county jail or workhouse for a period of six months, for each and every offense."

By legislation pronouncement, the laws in relation to illegal sales of liquors "are to be construed liberally, so as to prevent evasions and subterfuges, and to effectuate the objects had in view." Code (Shannon) § 6783.

That portion of the trial judge's instructions to the jury assigned by appellant to be erroneous is:

"If you find from the proof in this case that the state's witness, Wilson, was taken upon the Harry Lee, a steamboat, at Ashport, in Lauderdale county, Tenn., with others or alone, and that it was his purpose in getting on said boat to buy intoxicating liquors, and was also the purpose of those operating said boat and the defendant in taking him on the same to sell him intoxicating liquors, and that, after he was taken upon said boat or got upon the same in Lauderdale county, said boat was backed out into the Mississippi river and was run out in said river across the channel of said river and across the western boundary of the state of Tennessee and Lauderdale county and into the state of Arkansas, and that the defendant was the barkeeper on said boat, and that while said boat and said witness were in said river, across the main channel and in the state of Arkansas, the defendant sold to the said state's witness whisky or intoxicating liquor, and then said boat was run back to the Tennessee shore, and the said witness or others were permitted to get off of said boat, then I charge you that the defendant would be guilty."

It is the contention of Kinnane that, under the facts outlined, any sale so made by him was made without the jurisdiction of this state, since the money was passed and the liquor delivered beyond the western boundary line of Tennessee.

We are required by the quoted statute to look behind the technical phase of the transaction if necessary "to prevent evasions and subterfuges." When we do this we think it is apparent that Wilson was taken on the boat for the purpose of evading the statute and defeating "the objects had in view" when our liquor laws were enacted. The loop made by the boat (with the exchange of liquor and cash near midstream but just beyond the state line) was intended to serve as a cloak for the...