People v. Salts

• Decision Date: 20 February 1928
• Docket Number: No. 18079.,18079.
• Parties: PEOPLE v. SALTS.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

328 Ill. 494

160 N.E. 86

PEOPLE

v.SALTS.

No. 18079.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 20, 1927.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 20, 1928.

Error to Municipal Court of Chicago; George A. Curran, Judge.

Joseph Saltis was convicted of carrying a revolver concealed upon his person, and he brings error.

Affirmed.W. W. O'Brien, of Chicago (James M. Burke, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.

Oscar E. Carlstrom, Atty. Gen., Robert E. Crowe, State's Atty., of Chicago, and G. E. Nelson, of Petersburg (Edward E. Wilson, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

DUNN, J.

Joseph Saltis, having waived a jury, was convicted upon a trial by the court in the municipal court of Chicago upon an information charging him with carrying a revolver concealed upon his person, and has sued out a writ of error from this court to reverse the judgment, the ground of our jurisdiction being that the constitutionality of section 4 of the act revising the law relating to deadly weapons (Laws of 1925, p. 339), is involved. The constitutionality of the section is the first question to be determined. It is as follows:

‘No person shall carry concealed on or about his person a pistol, revolver or other firearm. This provision does not apply, however, to the following officers while engaged in the discharge of their official duties: Sheriffs, coroners, constables, policemen or other duly constituted peace officers, and wardens, superintendents and keepers of prisons, penitentiaries, jails and other institutions for the detention of persons accused or convicted of crime; nor to the following employees or agents while engaged in the discharge of the duties of their employment; conductors, baggagemen, messengers, drivers, watchmen, special agents and policemen employed by railroads or express companies; nor to persons lawfully summoned by an officer to assist in making arrests or preserving the peace while so engaged in assisting such officer.’

It is contended that the section is unconstitutional because of its exclusion from the prohibition of ‘the following employees or agents while engaged in the discharge of the duties of their employment; conductors, baggagemen, messengers, drivers, watchmen, special agents and policemen employed by railroads or express companies.’ It is argued that there is no basis in reason for the exemption of these persons from the prohibition of carrying concealed weapons on the person; that there are many persons engaged in occupations of a like character, having like duties and expoosed to similar dangers, who are denied the right to carry firearms for their protection and the protection of their property and the property which is entrusted to them; that the classification in this section has no reasonable relation to the purpose intended to be served by the act and therefore violates those provisions of the state and federal Constitutions which guarantee due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.

The principle has been stated in varying language in many cases that every person has a right to be governed by general laws operating equally and uniformly upon all persons in like circumstances who are within the condition for which the law provides, and the classification must be so general as to bring within the operation of the act all persons in substantially the same situation. Equal protection of the law requires that the rights of every person must be governed by the same rule of law under similar circumstances, and a mere arbitrary discrimination between different classes is a denial of the equal protection of the law. Some of the cases in which this principle has been announced are Ritchie v. People, 155 Ill. 98, 40 N. E. 454,29 L. R. A. 79, 46 Am. St. Rep. 315;Millett v. People, 117 Ill. 294, 7 N. E. 631,57 Am. St. Rep. 869;Lippman v. People, 175 Ill. 101, 51 N. E. 872;Ruhstrat v. People, 185 Ill. 133, 57 N. E. 41,49 L. R. A. 181, 76 Am. St. Rep. 30;Gillespie v. People, 188 Ill. 1768 58 N. E. 1007,52 L. R. A. 283, 80 Am. St. Rep. 176;Mathews v. People, 202 Ill. 389, 67 N. E. 28,63 L. R. A. 73, 95 Am. St. Rep. 241;Sturges & Burn Manf. Co. v. Pastel, 301 Ill. 253, 133 N. E. 762;Frazer v. Shelton, 320 Ill. 253, 150 N. E. 696, 43 A. L. R. 1086;Berry v. City of Chicago, 320 Ill. 536, 151 N. E. 581. The plaintiff in error refers to autobusses engaged in the transportation of persons and property on the highways, jewelry or diamond salesmen transporting their wares by automobile, telephone, telegraph, and electric light companies transporting valuable material and costly tools for construction work, street car companies, banks, packers, manufacturers, and their employees and others as persons in similar situation to those named in the act and equally entitled to the protection of concealed weapons.

The object of the Legislature in the passage of the act was to protect the public against the occurrence of assaults, affrays, and crimes of violence, which are encouraged by the custom of the general and promiscuous carrying of concealed weapons. The section in question therefore defines tersely and clearly, in a single sentence, the act it was intended to prohibit. It was clearly within the legislative power to pass the act. The definition of the offense in section 4 gave the prohibition universal application. The Legislature, believing that the purpose of the act did not require its application to peace officers or to persons engaged in certain employments while in the discharge of their duties, enacted by subsequent clauses that the prohibition should not apply to such persons. It is a legislative question whether an evil exists which requires means to be taken for its suppression and what those means shall be, and its acts to that end will not be interfered with unless clearly in violation of some constitutional limitation. The Legislature may consider degrees of evil and is not bound to pass such a law as will meet every case. It has a wide discretion in classifying the objects of its legislation, and such classification need not be scientific or logically appropriate.If uniform within the class and not palpably arbitrary it will be sufficient. People v. Stokes, 281 Ill. 159, 118 N. E. 87;Stewart v. Brady, 300 Ill. 425, 133 N. E. 310;Griffith v. Connecticut, 218 U. S. 563,31 S. Ct. 134, 54 L. Ed. 1155;Mutual Loan Co. v. Martell, 222 U. S. 225, 32 S. Ct. 74, 56 L. Ed. 175, Ann. Cas. 1913B, 529;Hall v. Geiger, 242 U. S. 539, 37 S. Ct. 217, 61 L. Ed. 480, L. R. A. 1917F, 514, Ann. Cas. 1917C, 643;Wessell v. Timberlake, 95 Ohio St. 21. A distinction in legislation is not arbitrary if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, and the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed. It makes no difference that the facts may be disputed or their effect opposed by argument and opinion of serious strength. It is the function of the Legislature to discern and correct evils, and it may make discriminations if founded on distinctions that the court cannot pronounce unreasonable and purely arbitrary. Rast v. Van Demand & Lewis Co., 240 U. S. 342, 36 S. Ct. 370, 60 L. Ed. 679, L. R. A. 1917A, 421, Ann. Cas. 1917B, 455. It is competent for the Legislature to determine upon what differences a distinction may be made for the purpose of statutory classification between objects otherwise having resemblance, though such power cannot be arbitrarily exercised and the distinction must have a reasonable basis.

‘It is to be remembered that the question presented is of the power of the Legislature-not the policy of the exercise of the power. To be able to find fault, therefore, with such policy is not to establish the invalidity of the law based upon it.’ International Harvester Co. v. Missouri, 234 U. S. 199, 34 S. Ct. 859, 58 L. Ed. 1276,52 L. R. A. (N. S.) 525.

The burden is upon the plaintiff in error, in assailing the classification made by the law, to show that it does not rest upon any reasonable basis but is essentially arbitrary. In determining the extent to which the right of persons to carry concealed weapons should be denied, the Legislature was not bound, in order to support the constitutional validity of its regulatory act, to extend it to all cases to which it might possibly reach, but was free to recognize degrees of harm and to extend the exemption from the general prohibition to thoses classes of cases in which regard for the public peace and safety seemed most clearly to justifysuch exemption.

‘The scope of judicial inquiry in deciding the question of power is not to be confused with the scope of legislative considerations in dealing with the matter of policy. Whether the enactment is wise or unwise, whether it is based on sound economic theory, whether it is the best means to achieve the desired result; whether, in short, the legislative discretion within its prescribed limits, should be exercised in a particular...