State v. Gupton

• Decision Date: 30 June 1848
• Citation: 8 Ired. 271,30 N.C. 271
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: THE STATE v. JOHN GUPTON.

8 Ired. 271

30 N.C. 271

THE STATE

v.JOHN GUPTON.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

June Term, 1848.

The game of Ten pins is not a game of chance, and therefore persons playing at it are not indictable under our Act of Assembly, Rev. Stat. chap. 34, sec. 68.

Appeal from the Superior Court of Law of Nash County, at the Spring Term, 1848, his Honor Judge CALDWELL presiding.

The defendant was indicted, with two others, for playing together “at a certain public gaming place called a Ten-pin-alley, a certain game of chance called Ten pins, and betting money thereat,” contrary to the statute. Upon not guilty pleaded the defendant was tried alone.

Evidence was given for the State, that a Ten-pin-alley

was kept up at a public place, where spirituous liquors were retailed, and that the defendant, with others charged, played the game of Ten pins for money. Evidence was futher given, that the game is thus played. Ten pins or blocks of wood are set up at one end of a platform sixty feet long and four feet wide, and the players stand at the other end and thence bowl a wooden ball at the pins, and he who knocks down the greater number of the pins, is the winner.

For the defendant it was contended, that the case proved was not within any statute. But his Honor was of opinion, that, under the broad words of the Act of Assembly, the facts constituted an indictable offence, and the jury convicted the defendant, and after sentence, he appealed.

Attorney General, for the State .

No counsel for the defendant.

RUFFIN, C. J.

The legislature has wisely set its face against the idle and vicious practice of gaming; and to that end has passed various laws, calculated more or less to suppress it. But no one of them, we believe, reaches the present case. Besides avoiding all securities for money won at play, certain kinds of gaming are made criminal. Playing at cards in a public house, and betting thereon, and suffering such gaming at cards by the keeper of the house, or supplying the players with refreshments, are forbidden and distinctly made indictable. Against public gaming tables also there are several provisions. E. O., A. B., and A. B. C., faro banks, pass die tables, or any other table or bank of the same or like kind under any denomination, are forbidden to be used in this State, and heavy penalties given against any one, who keeps or uses them or who suffers games to be played at them in his house; and authority is given to certain officers to destroy the tables, and seize all money staked or exhibited. Rev. Stat. c. 34, s. 64, &c. None of those enactments sustain this indicment. Except as to gaming at cards, forfeitures and pecuniary penalties alone are enacted; and not indictment. To supply that omission the legislature passed the act of 1835, which is incorporated into the present statute. Rev. St. c. 34, s. 68. It is the only provision on which reliance is placed in support of this indictment, and is, no doubt, the one on which the indictment was drawn. It enacts that, in addition to the penalties before prescribed, any person, who shall construct, erect, keep up, or use any public gaming table or place, at which games of chance shall be played, by whatever name called, and every person, who shall play at any of the forbidden gaming tables any game of chance and bet thereon, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon indictment and conviction shall be punished as prescribed by the Act. The question, then, is the narrow one, whether “ten pins,” as it is described in the exception, is a game of chance, or not. The phrase, “game of chance,” is not one long known in the law and having therein a settled signification, but was introduced into our statute book by the act of 1835. As it had no technical meaning, as a legal expression, it must have been...