State v. Coleman

• Decision Date: 10 December 1906
• Docket Number: 16,362
• Citation: 117 La. 973,42 So. 471
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. COLEMAN

42 So. 471

117 La. 973

STATE v. COLEMAN

No. 16,362

Supreme Court of Louisiana

December 10, 1906

Appeal from Twenty-Fourth Judicial District Court, Parish of East Feliciana; Joseph Lindsay Golsan, Judge.

John Coleman was convicted of Perjury, and appeals. Affirmed.

Robert Flournoy Walker, for appellant.

Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., and George Jones Woodside, Dis. Atty (Lewis Guion, of counsel), for the State

OPINION

BREAUX C.J.

An information was prosecuted by the district attorney of the Twenty-Fourth judicial district of the state of Louisiana, charging John Coleman with having committed corrupt and willful perjury.

After due trial before the court and jury, he was found guilty and sentenced to serve in the penitentiary at hard labor for six months.

The Attorney General suggested that the transcript contains no bills of exception, no motion in arrest, no assignment of errors, and that an inspection of the record shows no error and on that ground moves to dismiss the appeal, or that the verdict and sentence be affirmed.

It is as set forth in the motion of the Attorney General. There was no ground set forth for the appeal.

The insistence of counsel in the brief for defendant is that the law (section 857 of the Revised Statutes) has been repealed by Act No. 118, p. 200, of 1906. Although the point has been timely raised, the question being very exceptional, and in view of the fact that no one should be convicted under a repealed law, the matter was taken up and carefully considered. The conclusion is that there was no repeal.

The offense with which the defendant is charged in the indictment was committed on the 16th day of September, 1905. He was prosecuted under section 857 of the Revised Statutes.

The recent law, which learned counsel representing the defendant says repealed section 857 of the Revised Statutes by implication, is Act No. 118, p. 200, of the Acts of 1906.

We have compared the two acts, and found that the statute before cited provides that any one who commits perjury or procures another to commit perjury on his oath or affirmation in any suit, controversy, matter, or cause pending before any of the courts of the state, or a matter of any deposition or affidavit, upon conviction shall be imprisoned at hard labor not more than five years.

This is the general statute regarding perjury. A subsequent law, which according to defendant's contention has repealed this article, relates to willful, corrupt, and false swearing, and provides that whoever shall be found guilty of that offense commits a felony punishable by imprisonment, with or without hard labor, for not less than six months and not more than two years.

The last statute contains no saving clause regarding crimes committed before its date, nor does it contain a repealing clause.

The second section of this act sets forth that testifying differently to facts under an investigation by a grand jury, committing magistrate, or in an affidavit presented to a district attorney as a basis for a bill for information, for the purpose of procuring indictment on affidavit, or for the purpose of procuring a bill of information against a person charged and who shall subsequently testify differently, shall be guilty of willful, corrupt, and false swearing.

The last statute, to which we have just referred, does not repeal in whole or in part the cited section of the Revised Statutes, supra.

To hold that a statute has repealed a prior statute, it must be evident that it was the intention of the Legislature to enact a new law in place of the old. The...