State v. James
| Decision Date | 20 March 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 45478,45478 |
| Citation | 128 So.2d 21,241 La. 233 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Robert JAMES, Jr. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Thomas M. Comegys, Jr., Shreveport, for defendant-appellant.
Jack P. F. Gremillion, Atty. Gen., M. E. Culligan, Asst. Atty. Gen., John A. Richardson, Dist. Atty., Shreveport, for appellee.
Robert James, Jr., charged with murder, was tried, found guilty as charged without capital punishment, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Several bills of exception, timely reserved and perfected, present only two questions for our decision on appeal.
The first question involves the validity of the indictment. The indictment under which appellant was convicted was drawn in the short form authorized by Article 235 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. He contends that this indictment is fatally defective because it denied him due process of law and did not inform him of the nature and cause of the accusation.
The contention here raised by appellant as to the unconstitutionality of the short form indictment has been passed upon by this court in other cases and found to be without merit. See State v. White, 172 La. 1045, 136 So. 47; State v. Capaci, 179 La. 462, 154 So. 419; State v. Eisenhardt, 185 La. 308, 169 So. 417; State v. Leming, 217 La. 257, 46 So.2d 262; State v. Eyer, 237 La. 45, 110 So.2d 521.
Appellant states that the first case of this court to approve the short form indictment for the crime of murder was State v. White, supra, and calls our attention to the following quotation from that case:
* * *'
Appellant then states that the holding in the White case has been the basis of subsequent decisions upholding the validity of an indictment in the short form for the crime of murder, among which are State v. Capaci and State v. Eisenhardt, supra, both decided before the adoption of the Louisiana Criminal Code in 1942.
Appellant does not contend that these cases were incorrectly decided, but argues that when the Legislature adopted the 1942 Criminal Code, the substantive law, including the definition of murder, was changed, and that the word 'murder' no longer has the universal and common meaning of 'the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought'. Consequently, he says, since 1942, whenever the crime of murder is charged in the short form indictment, the accused is not informed but misinformed; in other words, that since 1942 the short form indictment charging murder does not inform the accused of the nature and cause of the accusation against him.
The answer to appellant's contention is that the definition of murder was not changed in essence when that crime was defined in Article 30 of our Criminal Code in 1942. Under the first subdivision of Article 30 the offender has the specific intent to kill, and malice in the old common-law definition of murder is nothing more than a specific intent to kill, and means the same thing. Subsection (2) of this article, which provides that when an offender engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of certain designated felonies kills a human being, the crime is murder, is nothing more than the common-law rule which was followed in Louisiana before the adoption of the Code. Consequently an indictment in the short form since the adoption of the Criminal Code, contrary to what appellant says, does not misinform the accused of the nature and cause of the accusation against him.
Moreover, since the adoption of this Code the court has had occasion in other cases to consider the validity of the short form indictment for the crime of murder. See State v. Leming and State v. Eyer, both cited supra. In those cases the court concluded that the indictment so drawn did not deny to the defendant his right to due process of law and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.
One of the most frequent attacks on the validity of an indictment is that it does not inform the accused of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. This constitutional provision means...
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