People v. Krueger
| Decision Date | 15 December 1908 |
| Citation | 86 N.E. 617,237 Ill. 357 |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. KRUEGER. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Appellate Court, First District, on Error to Municipal Court of Chicago; Edwin K. Walker, Judge.
Charles Krueger was convicted of violationg section 2 of the lottery policy act (Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, c. 38, § 185b), and from an affirmance of the conviction by the Appellate Court he brings error. Affirmed.Edward H. Morris, for plaintiff in error.
W. H. Stead, Atty. Gen., and John J. Healy, State's Atty. (J. Kent Greene and F. L. Barnett, of counsel), for the People.
This is an information brought in the municipal court of the city of Chicago, charging plaintiff in error with ‘unlawfully and knowly’ having ‘in his possession, for the purpose of gaming, a certain writing and paper and document representing and being a record of a chance, share, and interest in numbers drawn and to be drawn, and which papers, writing, and documents aforesaid is commonly called ‘policy,’ and in the nature of a bet, wager, and insurance upon the drawing and drawn numbers of a public and private lottery,' in violation of certain designated sections of the statutes. This information was based particularly on that portion of section 2 of the lottery policy act (Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, p. 709, c. 38, § 185b), which states that a person shall be guilty of the offense if he ‘shall have in his possession, knowingly, any writing, paper or document, representing or being a record of any chance, share or interest in numbers sold, drawn or to be drawn, or in what is commonly called ‘policy,’ or in the nature of a bet, wager or insurance, upon the drawing or drawn numbers of any public or private lottery,' etc. On a trial in the municipal court a verdict of guilty was rendered, and a judgment entered that plaintiff in error pay a fine of $500 and costs, and be confined in the house of correction for three months. Writ of error was sued out to the Appellate Court, where the judgment was affirmed, and the case is brought here by writ of error for further review.
Plaintiff in error contends that the municipal court was without constitutional authority and jurisdiction to try him on information. This question has been decided adversely to plaintiff in error's contention in People v. Glowacki (Ill.) 86 N. E. 368. Furthermore, this constitutional question was first raised by petition for rehearing in the Appellate Court, and hence was waived. In re McWhirter, 235 Ill. 607, 85 N. E. 918.
It is also contended that the information does not allege that plaintiff in error had in his possession the kind of writing prohibited by the statute in question, the argument being, as we understand it, that the writing, paper, or document must represent a record of a chance, share, or interest of tickets ‘sold,’ and that there is no proof in this record that any lottery tickets or numbers were sold. It appears from this record that ‘policy’ is played by a person going to the writer of ‘policy’ and selecting several numbers, usually three, but sometimes two, four, or more, that he wants to play, and putting up the required amount of money that he is to pay for the right to select or guess or wager on those numbers. Three copies of these numbers and amount paid are then recorded on slips of paper by means of carbon paper. The player gets one copy, the policy writer keeps one, and the third is sent to the main office that employs the policy writer. There are different forms of playing policy. Usually there are 78 different numbers to choose from, but in some games there are 80 numbers. In case 78 numbers are selected from, these 78 are supposed to be put in a wheel and mixed up, and then 12 of them drawn and recorded on a slip of paper, copies of which are given to the persons who have wagered on that special drawing of numbers. If the person who has made a wager finds among these 12 numbers drawn the 3 numbers he selected, as shown by his slip, he wins. If all 3 numbers are not among the numbers so drawn, he loses. If there are more than 78 numbers used, or if the player bets on more or less than three, as he may in the different kinds of ‘policy,’ the drawings are in a similar way. It appears from this record that the numbers are sometimes drawn otherwise than by wheel, but always by chance. The evidence shows that certain police officers in plain clothes went to defendant's place in the city of Chicago about noon, on ...
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Stein v. Meyers
...the court held that ‘U. States' manifestly meant, as employed in an article claimed to be libelous, ‘United States.’ In People v. Krueger, 237 Ill. 357, 86 N. E. 617, this court held that the spelling of the word ‘knowingly’ in an information as ‘knowly’ was not reversible error. The abbrev......
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