State v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 31 December 1827
• Citation: 12 N.C. 360
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. ARCHIBALD JOHNSON.

12 N.C. 360

STATE

v.ARCHIBALD JOHNSON.

SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA

DECEMBER TERM, 1827.

From New Hanover.

The act of 1825 was passed to prevent the transportation of slaves by persons having those facilities to do it which a connection with a ship gives. The act of concealing a slave on shipboard, with the intent to carry him from the State, by a person having no connection with the ship, is not within the mischief. An indictment on the statute, which did not charge the prisoner to be in any way connected with the ship in which the slave was concealed, was held to be fatally defective.

THE prisoner was tried upon an indictment consisting of four counts, upon the first and third of which only he was convicted. The first count was as follows:

"The jurors for the State, upon their oath present, that Archibald Johnson, late of New Hanover, on the twenty-first day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, he the said Archibald Johnson then being within this State, on board a certain vessel called the Sally Ann, with force and arms, in the county of New Hanover, feloniously did conceal, on board the said vessel, a certain mulatto slave named Frederic; the said mulatto slave then being the property of a citizen of this State, to wit, the property of one Edward B. Dudley, without the consent in writing of the said Edward B. Dudley, the owner of the slave, previously obtained, with the intent, and for the purpose of carrying and conveying the said mulatto slave out of this State, contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State."

The third count was exactly like the first, with the exception that it charged that the prisoner "did convey on board," instead of "did conceal on board."

After verdict, his Honor, Judge Ruffin, upon a motion in arrest of judgment, delivered the following opinion, which is extracted from the case sent to this Court:

"But the court, considering the indictment, doth deem it insufficient to authorize sentence of death upon the prisoner, because it charges only that the prisoner being in this State, on board a certain vessel called the Sally Ann, but without charging that he was the master or the cook, or a mariner of some other description, then on board as such. Prom the whole act taken together it is thought to extend only to seafaring persons, and those belonging or attached to the particular vessel to which the slave is conveyed or in which he is concealed, and not to embrace even seamen forming the crew of another vessel, much less mere landsmen, though they may convey and conceal a slave in a vessel, and, in so doing, may get upon or into the vessel, so as to be literally on board of her. Casual, or wrongful, or temporary personal presence on board does not either create the temptation or present...