Murphy v. State

• Decision Date: 26 March 1886
• Parties: Murphy v. State.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

106 Ind. 96
5 N.E. 767

Murphy
v.
State.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Filed March 26, 1886.

Appeal from Owen circuit court.

Edgar C. Steele and Willis Hickam, for appellant.

The Attorney General, for appellee.

Niblack, C. J.

Over a motion to quash the indictment, the appellant was tried, and, over a motion in arrest of judgment, was convicted of an alleged criminal offense upon an indictment, the body of which reads as follows:

“The grand jurors of the county of Owen and state of Indiana on their oath present that, at the county of Owen and state of Indiana, on the sixteenth day of August, 18184, one Thomas Murphy did then and there unlawfully sell to John Vaughn, at and for the price of ten cents, a less quantity than a quart at a time, to-wit, one gill of whisky; he, the said Thomas Murphy, not then and there having a license to sell intoxicating liquors in a less quantity than a quart at a time.”

The only question made on behalf of the appellant is upon the sufficiency of the indictment, the contention being that the indictment is fatally defective because the time at which the offense is charged to have been committed is subsequent to the return of the indictment, and is consequently an impossible time. It is argued on behalf of the state that the fair inference from the case of State v. Sammons, 95 Ind. 22, is that an impossible date in an indictment is the equivalent of no date at all; and that, as section 1756, Rev. St. 1881, provides that no indictment or information shall be quashed or set aside, or proceeding upon it arrested, for omitting to state the time at which the offense was committed, or for stating the time imperfectly, unless time is of the essence of the offense, the fixing of an impossible date is no longer a cause for quashing an indictment. The opinion in that case does intimate that the imperfect statement of time then under consideration might, perhaps, have been treated or regarded as the equivalent of no statement of any particular time, but it really decides only that an indictment ought not to be quashed for omitting to state the time at which the alleged offense was committed, or on account of an imperfect statement of the time. There is...