State v. Bruner

• Decision Date: 23 May 1887
• Docket Number: 13,270
• Parties: The State v. Bruner
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

12 N.E. 103

111 Ind. 98

The State v. Bruner

No. 13,270

Supreme Court of Indiana

May 23, 1887

From the Pike Circuit Court.

The judgment is reversed, with costs, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings.

F. T Hord, Attorney General, J. L. Bretz, Prosecuting Attorney and E. Smith, for the State.

E. P Richardson and A. H. Taylor, for appellee.

OPINION

Niblack, J.

This was a criminal prosecution against Edward Bruner, the appellee, and one Ralph Smith, based upon an affidavit filed before a justice of the peace of Pike county. Bruner was arrested, and upon a trial the justice found him guilty as charged and adjudged a fine against him. Upon an appeal to the circuit court, the affidavit was quashed and Bruner was discharged. The substantial part of the affidavit is as follows:

"Before me, John M. White, a justice of the peace for said county" (meaning Pike county), "came William Long, who, being duly sworn according to law, deposeth and sayeth that on or about the 21st day of November, in the year 1885, at the county of Pike and State of Indiana, Ralph Smith and Edward Bruner, late of said county, did then and there unlawfully and cruelly torture, torment and needlessly mutilate a certain animal, to wit, a goose, the property of some person or persons to the affiant unknown, by then and there unlawfully turpentining and burning, in a cruel and wanton manner, the said goose."

There is a well defined difference between the offence of malicious or mischievous injury to property and that of cruelty to animals. The former constituted an indictable offence at common law, while the latter did not. The former has ever been recognized as an indictable offence, as a measure of protection to the owner of property liable to be maliciously or mischievously injured. The latter has in more recent years been made punishable as a scheme for the protection of animals without regard to their ownership. A man may be guilty of cruelty to his own animal, or to an animal without any known owner, or which has, in fact, no owner. When, however, the ownership of the animal is charged, such ownership becomes a matter of description and must be proved as alleged.

The offence plainly intended to be charged in this case is cruelty to an animal, a domestic fowl being an animal within the meaning of the statute.

So much of section 2101, R. S. 1881, which defines the various offences denominated "Cruelty to...