State v. Chandler
| Decision Date | 28 June 1884 |
| Docket Number | 11,755 |
| Citation | 96 Ind. 591 |
| Parties | The State v. Chandler |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Monroe Circuit Court.
Judgment Reversed.
F. T Hord, Attorney General, and J. E. Henley, for the State.
J. H Louden and R. W. Miers, for appellees.
The court below sustained appellee's motion to quash the indictment, and the State appeals.
The charging part of the indictment reads as follows: "One William Chandler, late of said county, on the 14th day of August, A. D. 1883, and on divers other days and times, as well before as after that date, and previous to this presentment, at said county and State aforesaid, being a married man and having a lawful wife then living, and Grace Beeman, at the time being unmarried, and Grace Beeman and said Chandler, not being married to each other, did then and there during said time unlawfully live and cohabit together as man and wife." The statute on which the prosecution is based reads thus: "Whoever cohabits with another in a state of adultery or fornication shall be fined in any sum not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisoned in the county jail not exceeding six months." The objection to the indictment is that it does not charge that the defendant and Grace Beeman lived together in a state of fornication or in a state of adultery.
It has been many times decided that the general rule is that if the offence is charged either in the language of the statute, or in language of like import and equivalent meaning, the indictment will be held good. In the present case the language used is not that of the statute, and the question is whether that employed is equivalent to that found in the statute.
The term cohabit has not such a broad and certain meaning as that annexed to it by the State. The word is not one of a certain meaning, for the lexicographers define it to mean "to dwell with another in the same place;" "to live together as husband and wife." Worcester's Dict.; Webster's Dict. Bouvier says The word, considered apart from the words with which it is associated, can not, then, be taken as equivalent to the language of the statute, for it can not be inferred from the use of the word that the parties were guilty of adultery or fornication. The statute itself employs the word in the sense of...
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Richey v. State
...as understood by the common law, was unlawful sexual intercourse between a man, either married or single, and an unmarried woman. State v. Chandler, 96 Ind. 591;Hood v. State, 56 Ind. 263, 26 Am. Rep. 21;State v. Lash, 16 N. J. Law, 380, 32 Am. Dec. 397; 19 Cyc. 1434. An act of fornication ......
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Richey v. The State
...for a man and woman to live together in the manner of husband and wife. Jackson v. State (1888), 116 Ind. 464, 19 N.E. 330; State v. Chandler (1884), 96 Ind. 591; State v. Johnson (1879), 69 Ind. State v. Cassida (1903), 67 Kan. 171, 72 P. 522; Turney v. State (1895), 60 Ark. 259, 29 S.W. 8......
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State v. Naylor
...and what was said by the court in that case must be considered with reference to the statute there discussed. In the case of State v. Chandler, 96 Ind. 591, the made it criminal for persons not married to each other to cohabit with each other in a state of adultery or fornication. The indic......
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Jelly v. Dabney, 4835
...is presumed to have adopted it as a part of the law and intended the same construction apply in this state." In State v. Chandler, 96 Ind. 591, 592-593 (1884) it was "The term Cohabit has not such a broad and certain meaning as that annexed to it by the State. The word is not one of a certa......