State v. Lowry
Decision Date | 26 April 1906 |
Docket Number | 20,719,20,646 |
Citation | 77 N.E. 728,166 Ind. 372 |
Parties | The State v. Lowry. Lewis v. The State |
Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
No 20,719. From Criminal Court of Marion County (34,819); James M. Leathers, Special Judge. No. 20,646. From Madison Circuit Court; John F. McClure, Judge.
Prosecutions by the State of Indiana against William H. Lowry and John M Lewis. From judgments acquitting Lowry and convicting Lewis the State and Lewis, respectively, appeal. Not sustained.
Reversed.
Charles W. Miller, Attorney-General, C. C. Hadley, L. G. Rothschild and W. C. Geake, for the State.
Taylor, Woods & Willson, for appellee Lowry.
Leslie Kinnard, B. R. Call and Taylor, Woods & Willson, for appellant Lewis.
The defendants below, Lowry and Lewis, were respectively charged with violating an act of the General Assembly, approved February 28, 1905, known as the anti-cigarette law. Acts 1905, p. 82. Although the cases are wholly unrelated in their facts, the law questions involved are such that the appeals may advantageously be considered together.
In the first of said cases it appears that Lowry caused 1,000 cigarettes to be shipped to him, for his personal use, by a dealer in Louisville, Kentucky. The shipment was made by the Adams Express Company, a common carrier of goods for hire by express. The cigarettes were packed twenty in a box, each box had a United States revenue stamp thereon, and, in lots of twenty-five, these boxes were enclosed in packages or cartons, and the latter, in turn, were wrapped together in a strong paper and securely tied. This package was opened by Lowry upon its receipt, and from time to time, between May 8, 1906, and the institution of the prosecution, he smoked such cigarettes. It further appeared that Lowry, at the time in question, was forty years of age, in nowise engaged in the purchase, sale or distribution of cigarettes, and that the cigarettes he shipped into the State were not intended for sale, or to be given away, to any person or persons.
As to the prosecution against Lewis, it merely appears that at the time of his arrest he was smoking a cigarette, and that he had at that time upon his person a box containing five cigarettes. There is no contention that he was a dealer, that he had such cigarettes in his possession for the purpose of sale or gift, that he acquired them unlawfully, or that he was a minor. The case may therefore be assumed to have been that of a man smoking a cigarette, and having in his possession a few cigarettes intended for his own consumption.
The title and body of the enactment under which said prosecutions were had (Acts 1905, p. 82) are as follows: § 2216 Burns 1905.
Taking up the Lowry appeal first, the question arises whether a keeping or owning of cigarettes, in an unopened, original package (as that term is used in the law), is in violation of the statute. This question must be determined for two reasons: (1) Because the lawfulness of Lowry's act up to that point is involved; (2) because a determination of that question in his favor would raise a presumption that the words "keep" and "own" were not used in the sense contended for by the Attorney-General. The question as to the lawfulness of interstate commerce in cigarettes was taken out of the pale of controversy by the decision in Austin v. Tennessee (1900), 179 U.S. 343, 21 S.Ct. 132, 45 L.Ed. 224. It was there said:
It was said in Lyng v. Michigan (1890), 135 U.S. 161, 166, 10 S.Ct. 725, 34 L.Ed. 150: It has been well said that commerce among the states is a unit, and in respect to that commerce this is one country, and we are one people.
Some of the statements of the court in Leisy v. Hardin (1890), 135 U.S. 100, 10 S.Ct. 681, 34 L.Ed. 128, wherein the right was recognized to ship intoxicating liquor into a prohibition state and to sell such liquor therein, in original packages, led to the enactment by congress of what is known as the Wilson act, wherein it is provided that all fermented, distilled or other intoxicating liquors transported into any state or territory, or remaining therein, for use, consumption, sale or storage, shall, upon arrival, be subject to the operation and effect of laws enacted by the state or territory in the exercise of its police powers to the same extent as if said liquors had been produced in such state or territory. 26 Stat., p. 313, c. 728. We refer to this enactment as explanatory of some of the cases which we shall hereafter consider.
The states are not prohibited from enacting reasonable laws under the police powers, relative to interstate commerce, provided that such laws are local in their character and only incidently affect such commerce, but as the regulation of the transportation of goods from one state into another is a matter which is national in its character, the silence of congress is equivalent to a declaration that such commerce shall be free. Brown v. Maryland (1827), 12 Wheat. *419, 6 L.Ed. 678; Leisy v. Hardin, supra; Western Union Tel. Co. v. James (1896), 162 U.S. 650, 16 S.Ct. 934, 40 L.Ed. 1105. These two classes of powers--the authority of the Nation over interstate commerce and the control of the state over persons and things within its borders--often clash, and in noway can this commerce be kept free from burdensome restrictions except by the enforcement of the national authority to the extent that is necessary to protect it. It was said by Mr. Justice Catron, in License Cases (1847), 5 How. 504, 600, 12 L.Ed. 256, relative to the effect of according to the states a power to regulate such commerce while within their borders: ...
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