State v. McGee

• Citation: 69 A. 1059,80 Conn. 614
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Decision Date: 02 June 1908
• Parties: STATE v. McGEE.

69 A. 1059

80 Conn. 614

STATE

v. McGEE.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 2, 1908.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, New Haven County; William L. Bennett, Judge.

Frank J. McGee was convicted of intimidating an employé to refrain from work, and he appeals. Error, and new trial ordered.

William Kennedy and Walter J. Walsh, for appellant. Robert J. Woodruff, Pros. Atty., and Robert C. Stoddard, for the State.

THAYER, J. The information is in four counts, each for a distinct offense, charging that the accused "did by threatening, following, mocking, and annoying intimidate" the person named in such count to compel him, "against his will, to refrain from working in the employ of the McLagon Foundry Company." Gen. St. 1902, § 1296, provides that "every person who shall threaten or use any means to intimidate any person to compel such person, against his will, to do or abstain from doing any act which such person has a legal right to do, or shall persistently follow such person in a disorderly manner, or injure or threaten to injure his property with intent to intimidate him, shall be punished by fine or imprisonment." The accused did not demur to the information or move in arrest of judgment after verdict, but now claims that the information does not charge an offense under the statute. The gist of the offense created by the statute is the threatening or following, etc., with the purpose or intent to intimidate, and it is not necessary, to constitute the crime, that the person who is threatened shall in fact be intimidated, provided the threats are such as are calculated to intimidate or put in fear an ordinarily firm and prudent man. The information does not directly charge the accused with threatening, but it does so argumentatively when it charges that he intimidated by threatening. The information is bad in form, but the accused did not take advantage of the defect in the proper way. No question appears to have been raised upon the trial that an offense under the statute was not charged in the information. Both parties and the court treated it as a prosecution under section 1290. It is not an offense at common law to threaten another with intent by intimidating him to compel him to refrain from working for another, and, unless an offense under the statute is charged, no offense is charged. The defendant cannot now obtain a new trial for amendable defects in the information of which he did not seasonably take advantage, and upon a question not raised by his reasons of appeal. As already stated, it was not necessary that the parties threatened should have been actually intimidated. The court, therefore, correctly refused to charge, as requested, that actual intimidation was necessary, and committed no error in charging, as it did, "that it is not necessary, in order to prove a crime under the statute, that the person to whom the threats are made, or whom it is sought to intimidate, should be, in fact, made to fear or be in fact intimidated. It is only necessary to prove that the threats and acts are such as would be calculated to cause the ordinary man to fear or to affect his mind in such a way that he could not voluntarily act or assent. It is necessary,' however, under this statute, that the threat or means of intimidation should be understood by the person at whom or against whom they are directed as intended to frighten or intimidate him. * * * They should be such that he understands them to be threats and intimidation." This precluded the jury from finding a verdict against the accused, if they found "that the words claimed to have been uttered by the accused were in fact uttered in a friendly spirit or bantering way, as by way of a joke," and were a sufficient response to the defendant's request upon that subject. It also, in connection with the language used in other parts of the charge, sufficiently answers the defendant's request to charge as to the meaning of intimidation as used in the statute. Before...