State v. Harley

• Decision Date: 11 June 1917
• Docket Number: 9692.
• Parties: STATE v. HARLEY ET AL.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

92 S.E. 1034

107 S.C. 304

STATE v. HARLEY ET AL.

No. 9692.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

June 11, 1917

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Charleston County; R W. Memminger, Judge.

John Harley and others were convicted of maintaining a lottery, and appeal. Appeal dismissed.

B. H Mathews, of Charleston, for appellant.

Thos P. Stoney, of Charleston, for the State.

GARY C.J.

The defendants were convicted by the recorder of the city of Charleston and a jury for maintaining a lottery. They appealed to the court of general sessions, but their appeal was dismissed; whereupon they appealed to this court.

The first exception is as follows:

"Because his honor the presiding judge should have reversed the recorder, who erred, it is submitted, in stating in the presence of the jury that decisions of the United States Supreme Court had no place in the police court; whereas he should have held that, in so far as the said decisions are applicable to cases arising in the said police court, the same are binding thereon."

The recorder merely ruled in accordance with the well-settled principle that protection against officers not acting under claim of federal authority is not afforded by the guaranty of immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment of the federal Constitution, but the limitations of such amendment reach only the Federal government and its agents. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, reported in L. R. A. 1915B, 834, Ann. Cas. 1915C, 1177.

The second assignment of error is thus stated:

"Because his honor the circuit judge should have reversed the recorder, who erred, it is submitted, in allowing books and papers illegally seized to be exhibited to the jury."

The following is the language of his honor the circuit judge in dismissing the appeal:

"This is an appeal coming up upon a return from Recorder Jervey, with grounds of appeal and original papers in lieu of a detailed statement of the testimony signed by the witnesses, which was waived.

The only ground of appeal which has any substance to it is No. 2. Upon this ground the case is on first impression difficult to distinguish from Town of Blacksburg v. Beam, recently decided by our Supreme Court. The return of the recorder upon which the case is to be decided states that: 'After accused had been arrested and some evidence obtained of their having been engaged in violation of the section (ordinance against lotteries), additional evidence was procured from a locked room adjoining that in which they were arrested, to which locked room the accused had the key, and which was opened by command of officer at time of arrest and paraphernalia taken therefrom at the time.' A presumption arises from this statement that the arrest was lawful, and nothing appears to the contrary, and the statement of the recorder does not show that the defendants were searched and the key taken from any of their sacred persons as in the Beam Case, and so the surrender of the key seems to have been voluntary. The case is therefore distinguishable from the Beam Case in at least two important particulars; for here we have a lawful arrest and an apparently voluntary surrender of the veritable key to the offense."

It does not appear that the books and papers in question were illegally seized, but, even if they had been so seized, they nevertheless would...