People v. Sowrd

Decision Date15 December 1938
Docket NumberNo. 24821.,24821.
Citation18 N.E.2d 176,370 Ill. 140
PartiesPEOPLE v. SOWRD.
CourtIllinois Supreme Court

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Error to Second Division Appellate Court, First District, on Error to Municipal Court of Chicago; Joseph B. Hermes, Judge.

Rose Sowrd was convicted of unlawfully possessing marijuana and she brings error to review a judgment of the Appellate Court, 295 Ill.App. 314, 14 N.E.2d 957, upholding the conviction with modifications.

Reversed and remanded, with directions.Ellis & Westbrooks, Blaine G. Alston, De Frantz R. Williams, Claude W. B. Holman, and Dudley H. Thomas, all of Chicago, (Richard E. Westbrooks, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.

Otto Kerner, Atty. Gen., Thomas J. Courtney, State's Atty., of Chicago, and A. B. Dennis, of Danville (Edward E. Wilson, John T. Gallagher, Melvin S. Rembe, and Blair L. Varnes, all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

JONES, Justice.

Rose Sowrd was convicted in the municipal court of Chicago on an information charging that, not being an apothecary, physician or dentist, she unlawfully had in her possession and under her control ‘a certain habit forming drug, to-wit: Marijuana without first having a written prescription for said drug, in violation of section 158, chapter 91, Illinois Revised Statutes, 1935 [Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, c. 38, § 192.2].’ She was sentenced to the house of correction for one year and to pay a fine of $1,000 and costs. Her subsequent motion to vacate the judgment and sentence was denied. After she had served about eight months of the imprisonment she prosecuted a writ of error from the Appellate Court for the First District to review the proceeding. The Appellate Court upheld that part of the judgment imposing the fine, but held that under the provisions of the State Reformatory for Women Act of 1927, as amended in 1935 (Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, chap. 23, § 251), she should have been sentenced to imprisonment in the reformatory instead of the house of correction. The judgment was reversed and the cause remanded with directions to enter a proper judgment. The cause is here on a writ of error to the Appellate Court.

Several grounds are urged for reversal of the judgment of the trial court and that of the Appellate Court. It is urged that the State Reformatory for Women is a penitentiary and that the judgment of the Appellate Court is void because an offense for which an accused may be sentenced to the penitentiary may be prosecuted only by indictment; that the municipal court had no jurisdiction to sentence the defendant to the house of correction because the punishment provided by law for female offenders of the age of eighteen years, of over, is a sentence and commitment to the State Reformatory for Women. It is further claimed the information fails to charge any criminal offense; that, consequently, the trial court had no jurisdiction of the subject matter, and the judgment and sentence are void. This defense was urged in the trial court on motion to vacate the judgment, and in the Appellate Court. If it is well grounded, defendant is entitled to be discharged regardless of the other issues.

The section of the statute which is charged to have been violated by defendant is section 2 of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1935, Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, chap. 38, § 192.2. It provides: ‘It is unlawful for any person to manufacture, possess, have under his control, sell, prescribe, administer, dispense, or compound any narcotic drug, except as authorized in this Act.’

Paragraph (14) of section 1 of the same act, Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, c. 38, § 192.1(14), provides: “Narcotic drugs' means coca leaves, opium, cannabis, and every substance neither chemically nor physically distinguishable from them.' Paragraph (13) of the same section provides: “Cannabis' includes the following substances under whatever names they may be designated: (a) The dried flowering or fruiting tops of the pistillate plant Cannabis Sativa L., [Linne] from which the resin has not been extracted, (b) the resin extracted from such tops, and (c) every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such resin, or of such tops from which the resin has not been extracted.'

Prior to the enactment of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1935, the ‘Narcotic Drug Control law’ of 1931, Smith-Hurd Stats. c. 38, § 192a, et seq., was in force...

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13 cases
  • People v. Barker
    • United States
    • Supreme Court of Illinois
    • December 19, 1980
    ...... In People v. Sowrd (1938), 370 Ill. 140, 143-44, 18 N.E.2d 176, it was stated: .         "No rule of law is better settled than that an indictment or ......
  • People v. Hall
    • United States
    • Supreme Court of Illinois
    • December 17, 1982
    ......695, 383 N.E.2d 171.) Moreover, "an indictment or information must charge all the elements of the offense." (People v. Sowrd (1938), 370 Ill. 140, 143, 18 N.E.2d 176.) As the majority notes, this applies equally to the elements of the predicate felony in a count charging ......
  • People v. Bridges, Gen. No. 50146
    • United States
    • United States Appellate Court of Illinois
    • January 27, 1966
  • People v. Williams, Gen. No. 46463
    • United States
    • United States Appellate Court of Illinois
    • February 4, 1955
    ...... The proposition was resolved by our Supreme Court in People v. Sowrd, 370 Ill. 140, 18 N.E.2d 176, 177, 119 A.L.R. 1396, where Rose Sowrd was convicted on an information charging substantially in the language of the ......
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