Murphy v. The State
| Citation | 5 N.E. 767,106 Ind. 96 |
| Decision Date | 26 March 1886 |
| Docket Number | 12,911 |
| Parties | Murphy v. The State |
| Court | Supreme Court of Indiana |
From the Owen Circuit Court.
The judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded with instructions to the court to sustain the motion to quash the indictment.
E. C Steele and W. Hickam, for appellant.
F. T Hord, Attorney General, and W. B. Hord, for the State.
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 offence, 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 16th 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 whiskey, 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 offence 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, R. S. 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 offence was committed, or for stating the time imperfectly, unless time is of the essence of the offence, 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 there 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 offence was committed, or on account of an imperfect statement of the time. There is nothing in that case, either changing or intimating any change...
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