State v. Callahan
| Citation | 69 A. 957,76 N.J.L. 426 |
| Parties | STATE v. CALLAHAN. |
| Decision Date | 08 June 1908 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey) |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Error to Court of Quarter Sessions, Middlesex County.
James Callahan was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, and brings error. Affirmed.
Argued February term, 1908, before GUMMERE, C. J., and BERGEN and MINTURN, JJ.
Robert Adrain, for plaintiff in error. George Berdine, for the State.
The plaintiff in error was convicted of keeping a disorderly house. The case made by the state disclosed that defendant was the owner of the house in which the offense is charged to have been committed; that he resided there with a woman said to be his housekeeper; that other women of doubtful morals frequented the place, three being there when plaintiff in error was arrested; that a saloon was conducted in connection with the house in which men were solicited by women; and that intoxicating liquors were sold in violation of the law, from which the jury might properly infer that a disorderly house was being kept. The plaintiff in error did not offer himself as a witness, nor call as a witness his housekeeper, who was present when he was arrested, and had lived there long enough to know the character of the house and its inmates when the house was raided under the direction of the mayor of the city.
The court charged the jury, in substance, that where the evidence, if true, would be conclusive of the guilt of the accused, and he can disprove it by his own oath as a witness, then his silence would justify a strong inference that he could not deny the charge, and to this exception was taken and error assigned. We think the charge correctly expressed the rule of law adopted in this state, and that it was applicable to the facts in this case, for there was evidence from which the jury might properly infer that accused was harboring immoral women, and that the place was a common bawdy house to which men and women resorted for unlawful purposes, and that intoxicating liquor was being sold in violation of law. The presence of the women, the selling of liquor unlawfully, the reason for the possession of gambling appliances, if not used or to be used unlawfully Could have been explained by the accused, and the inference of crime arising therefrom destroyed. Such explanation would be more than a general denial of guilt, and the refusal to give an explanation consistent with innocence justified the inference that the accused could not make any explanation which would overthrow the presumptions of guilt arising from the facts as proven by the state. Parker v. State, 61 N. J. Law, 308, 39 Atl. 651; State v. Wines, 65 N. J. Law, 32, 46 Atl. 702.
Error was also assigned...
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...by admissible evidence supporting each element of the crime. People v. Sawaya, 46 Cal.App.2d 466, 471, 115 P.2d 1101; State v. Callahan, supra (76 N.J.L. 426, 69 A. 957); see Bruce (One of the draftsmen of the American Bar Association resolution that preceded the adoption of the California ......
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