State v. M'Intyre
| Decision Date | 01 January 1874 |
| Citation | 19 Minn. 65 |
| Parties | STATE OF MINNESOTA v. THOMAS McINTYRE. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
F. R. E. Cornell, Atty. Gen., for the State.
Thomas Wilson and John R. Jones, for defendant.
This case is reported (under the provisions of section 1, c. 76, Laws 1870) for the determination of sundry questions, arising in the course of the proceedings below, which are deemed sufficiently important or doubtful by the judge of the district court to require the decision of this court.
The questions first claiming attention relate to the sufficiency of the indictment, the first count of which reads as follows:
"Thomas McIntyre is accused by the grand jury of the county of Fillmore, by this indictment, of the crime of murder in the second degree, committed as follows: That the said Thomas McIntyre, on the sixteenth day of August, A. D. 1870, at the town of Pilot Mound, in the county of Fillmore, in the state of Minnesota, feloniously and unlawfully did administer to Anna Mary Lafever, then and there being pregnant with a quick child, a medicine, drug, or substance a more particular description of the nature, quality, and kind of which said medicine, drug, or substance is to this grand jury unknown; the administering thereof being an act eminently dangerous to the person of said Anna Mary Lafever, and the said Thomas McIntyre then and there evincing a depraved mind on the part of the said Thomas McIntyre, regardless of the life of the said Anna Mary Lafever, although without any design to effect her death; whereby the said Anna Mary Lafever became and was sick and languishing, and so continued by means thereof sick and languishing until the twenty-third day of August, A. D. 1870, and then and there, by means of said medicine, drug, or substance, died; which death was produced then and there by means of said drug, medicine, or substance so administered to the said Anna Mary Lafever by the said Thomas McIntyre, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the state of Minnesota."
This count of the indictment is so clearly bad that the attorney general has with entire propriety declined to defend it. It is evidently framed under that part of section 2, c. 94, Gen. St., which provides that the killing of a human being without the authority of law, "when perpetrated by any act eminently dangerous to one or more persons, and evincing a depraved mind regardless of the life of such person or persons, although without any design to effect death, shall be murder in the second degree." By section 1, c. 108, Gen. St., an indictment is required to contain "a statement of the acts constituting the offense;" and by section 4 of the same chapter an indictment is required to be "direct and certain, as it regards the particular circumstances of the offense charged, when they are necessary to constitute a complete offense." By section 3, c. 111, Gen. St., an indictment is demurrable when it appears from the face thereof that "the facts stated do not constitute a public offense," and objection on this ground is so incurably fatal that it may not only be taken by demurrer, but upon the trial under the plea of not guilty, (as in this instance,) and in arrest of judgment. The acts, circumstances, and facts thus required to be stated are not averred in this indictment. The averment, "then and there being a woman pregnant with a quick child," is mere surplusage, not being important in itself, nor made important by any further allegation. The administration of the medicine, drug, or substance, administered in this instance, is not alleged to be ordinarily dangerous to life, nor to have been known by the defendant to be so; nor is it alleged that in this instance any peculiar circumstances existed, or were known by defendant to exist, which made its alleged administration dangerous in this instance. So far, then, as the allegation of acts, facts, and cir...
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State v. Howard
...certain as regards the offense, and the particular circumstances thereof, is imperative. State v. Brown, 12 Minn. 393 (490); State v. McIntyre, 19 Minn. 65 (93). The rule that the charge must be laid positively, and not inferentially by way of recital merely, is not abrogated by the It is t......