Robert Reed v. City of Greenville

• Decision Date: 02 November 1903
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: ROBERT REED v. CITY OF GREENVILLE

35 So. 178

83 Miss. 192

ROBERT REED v. CITY OF GREENVILLE

Supreme Court of Mississippi

November 2, 1903

October 1903

FROM the circuit court of Washington county. HON. A. McC. KIMBROUGH, Judge.

Reed the appellant, was charged, tried and convicted of the violation of an ordinance of the city of Greenville. He appealed to the circuit court from the municipal court and was there again tried and convicted and appealed therefrom to the supreme court.

The ordinance made it an offense against the city for any person to feloniously take, steal or carry away any personal property of another, or to have any stolen property in one's possession, knowing said property to be stolen. The evidence showed that appellant was an accessory before the fact to the crime of petit larceny, committed by one Reuben Frazier. The contention of counsel for appellant was that while, under the common law, accessories to misdemeanors are deemed principals, the common law does not apply to, and is not in force in, municipalities; that while the city of Greenville, having been chartered by a legislative enactment was given power to pass ordinances defining what were and what were not offenses, its municipal authorities must first pass ordinances defining offenses; and that the ordinance under which appellant was convicted did not, by its terms make accessories to petit larceny principals, and the common-law rule making them such could not be invoked to aid municipal ordinances.

Affirmed.

Jayne & Watson, for appellant.

We are aware that at common law and in Mississippi, under the statute and common law prevailing, the defendant could have been convicted, if the evidence was sufficient to justify it, under the common law ruling that in misdemeanors accessories would be treated as principals. 1 Hale, P. C., 613; 4 Blacks. Com., 36; Williams v. State, 12 Smed. & M., 58; Hogsett v. State, 40 Miss. 522.

We contend, however, that the two Mississippi cases, above cited, were based on the common law, which was adopted when this state entered the Union, and which, save when modified by statutory enactment or by judicial finding, remains the law of the land. However, the common law does not apply to and is not in force in municipalities. When a municipality is chartered by the legislature of the state (as was the case of the city of Greenville) or under the provisions of the municipal chapter of the code, as many towns and cites in the state are, the powers granted to the municipality are fixed by the charter, or by the municipal code chapter. The city of Greenville, having been chartered by legislative enactment, was given power to pass ordinances defining what were and what were not offenses and denouncing penalties for such offenses.

But under the charter powers granted to the city, its council must first pass ordinances defining offenses, which it did. Among the defenses defined was the one of petit larceny set out in the ordinance...