State v. Meehan

• Decision Date: 31 March 1931
• Docket Number: 13104.
• Parties: STATE v. MEEHAN.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

158 S.E. 151

160 S.C. 111

STATE v. MEEHAN.

No. 13104.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

March 31, 1931

Appeal from General Sessions, Circuit Court of Chesterfield County M. L. Bonham, Judge.

Parnell Meehan was convicted of bribery, and he appeals.

Affirmed.

The charge of Judge Bonham and the exceptions thereto are as follows:

Charge of Judge M. L. Bonham.

Mr Foreman and gentlemen of the jury, the court desires to express to you its appreciation of the great degree of patience you have exhibited in the hearing of this case under somewhat difficult circumstances. The court conceived it to be its duty, in the interest of fairness and justice, to keep you together during the trial of this case, and that has brought about some degree of discomfort to you as I can readily understand. It has separated you from your families and from your businesses, and you have borne this in an exemplary manner and with patience.

I shall be brief in my endeavor to convey to you my view of the law in this case. The law pertinent to this case is in a somewhat circumscribed area, and it is always my policy not to speak at length to juries upon questions of law, lest I confuse them by too much talk, so I shall try to give you fully, as concisely as I can, the principles of law pertaining to this case, so that you can bear them in mind, and when you go to your room to find the facts from the testimony you have heard, you may apply the law as I give it to you to the facts as you find them to be, and so arrive at your verdict.

The defendant at the bar, Mr. Meehan, is charged by this bill of indictment with the offense of bribery; the allegation of the indictment being that he did, on the day named in the indictment, to wit, on or about the 5th day of June, 1929 willfully and unlawfully and corruptly offer to give and did give and pay a sum of money, to wit, the sum of $95 lawful money of the United States to one George W. Gregory, then and now a member of the county board of commissioners of Chesterfield County, etc. (Here the court read the indictment to the jury.)

To that indictment, the defendant has pleaded not guilty, and, as is always the case when such a plea is entered, it casts upon the state the burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, gentlemen, that means just exactly what those two plain English words themselves imply, a doubt for which you can give a reason, a sound and sensible reason; and that doubt must arise out of the evidence in the case or a lack of evidence in the case. It does not mean a whimsical doubt or a fanciful doubt, such as a man of acute imagination might conjure, but such a doubt as a man of ordinary sense and reason would act upon in the conduct of his own business affairs. It is, as I say, such a doubt as the two words themselves imply, a doubt for which you can give a sound and sensible reason; and, if such a doubt as that arises in your minds upon your consideration of this case, then the defendant is entitled to that reasonable doubt, and to an acquittal at your hands.

Let me say right here that you gentlemen are the sole judges of the facts in this case. I think I had occasion to say to a jury here the other day in your hearing that, prior to the adoption of the Constitution of 1868, it was not only permissible, but it was a right exercised by the judges of this state, to convey to the juries their impressions and their belief of the force and effect of the testimony and evidence in the case as it was called, "marshalling the evidence," but there gradually grew up the feeling that certain of the judges abused that right, and therefore the Constitutional inhibition was put in and the jury were made the sole judges of the facts in the case; and so exceeding careful and jealous is the law to guard your right to have exclusive control of the facts in any case, to be the sole judges of the facts, that, if a judge should intimate to you, unintentionally or indirectly even, any opinion that he might have of the force and effect of the evidence, it would be reversible error.

Now, while that organic law makes you the sole judges of the facts in the case, that same law makes me the sole judge of the law applicable to the case. I may not step across the boundary line into your domain of the facts; and you may not step across that line into my domain of the law. I must take the facts as you find them from the evidence, and you must take the law as I give it to you; but there is this difference in our respective functions, there may be an appeal if I commit error in declaring the law to you, but there can be no appeal from your finding of the facts. If I commit error in declaring the law to you, there lies an appeal to the Supreme Court which sits over here in Columbia for the purpose of correcting errors of law; but there is no appeal from your finding of the facts. Those, now, are our respective functions in the trial of the case.

As I stated a while ago, the defendant here is charged with the offense of bribery. Bribery at common law is the giving and accepting of something of value to influence an officer in the discharge of his official duty; to have him do, or forbear the doing of, something that will inure to the benefit of the person offering the bribe. The Legislature of South Carolina has made it a statutory offense, and it is embodied in section 337 of the Criminal Code, which is as follows:

"Whoever corruptly gives, offers, or promises to any executive, legislative, or judicial officer, after his election or appointment either before or after he is qualified or has taken his seat, any gift or gratuity whatever, with intent to influence his act or vote, opinion, decision, or judgment on any matter, question, cause, or proceeding, which may be pending or may by law come or be brought before him in his official capacity, shall be punished by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary at hard labor not exceeding five years, or by fine not exceeding three thousand dollars, and imprisonment in jail not exceeding one year."

In other words, to constitute the elements of the offense made by that law which I have just read to you, there must be the offer or the giving of something of value to an officer of the law with the intent corruptly to influence his action in the performance of his official duty.

Now, gentlemen, there is an act in reference to your county which creates the office of county commissioner, an appointive office, and when a person has been appointed to it he is an officer, I charge you, within the purview of that act. Then there is another act of the Legislature pertaining to your county which creates the office of tax collector; and I charge you that that office is, as to your county, within the purview of that act.

The question here at issue is, did the defendant at the bar offer to the person named in this indictment, this officer, and pay to this officer named in the indictment, a sum of money with the corrupt intent to influence him in his official capacity to vote for T. L. Teal as one of the tax collectors of this county?

That is the issue, clear-cut and, I hope, clearly defined to you, upon which you are to pass after you have heard the evidence in this case as disclosed on the stand and the law as I shall give it to you. You will observe that the act says that whoever shall do this act prohibited with the corrupt intent shall be guilty of a crime. In other words, there must be the corrupt intent present in order to make it a crime.

How is the intent proven? How do you prove what a man intends to do? You can't look into his mind and heart and see what his intent is; therefore, you are to depend upon his utterances, if there be any relative to the matter in dispute, and upon his acts. Now, evidence is of two kinds, direct or positive evidence and circumstantial evidence, and the law recognizes and uses both classes, but it lays this inhibition upon the use of circumstantial evidence: The circumstances relied on to prove the guilt of the accused must point to his guilt so conclusively as to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis, except the hypothesis of his guilt. So, if there be direct and positive evidence of what a person did and said, that is proven by direct evidence testified to by witnesses to the things which they have seen and heard, which knowledge has come to them through the medium of their natural senses. By that evidence it is possible to prove the intent of a person as to a particular transaction. If there be no such evidence, or, if there be that evidence and the other, known as "Circumstantial Evidence," it may be proven in that way. Circumstantial evidence is that evidence which witnesses testify to of the facts and circumstances relating to or surrounding the matter under investigation with the view of casting light upon it.

By those two means you are to ascertain what was the intent of the defendant at the bar in this transaction which has been testified to; and that relates right back to your prerogative alone, to determine from the evidence alone, the circumstances relied upon tial, what was the intent of the defendant at the bar in this transaction. However, as I said a moment ago, the law lays this inhibition upon the use of circumstantial evidence, for, while the law recognizes and uses both direct, or positive, and circumstantial evidence (because there are certain crimes of a secret nature which no one ever sees done), it says this about circumstantial evidence: Before you can convict on cirumstantial evidene alone, the circumstances relied upon must point so conclusively to the guilt of the accused as to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis except the hypothesis of his guilt.

Gentlemen of the...