State v. Ostmann

• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: GOODE, J.
• Citation: State v. Ostmann, 100 S.W. 696, 123 Mo. App. 114 (Mo. App. 1906)
• Decision Date: 11 December 1906
• Parties: STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent, v. OSTMANN et al., Appellants

100 S.W. 696

123 Mo.App. 114

STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent, v. OSTMANN et al., Appellants

Court of Appeals of Missouri, St. Louis

December 11, 1906

Appeal from St. Charles Circuit Court.--Hon. James D. Barnett Judge.

AFFIRMED.

Judgment affirmed.

W. H Clopton and Thomas B. Harvey for appellants.

(1) The information does not allege that the prosecuting attorney preferred the charge "under his oath of office." Section 2750 so demands. And aside from the mandate of the statute, the term "information" requires such allegation. The information authorized by article 2, sec. 12 of the Constitution, is one sufficient at common law. State v. Klem, 79 Mo. 515; State v. Briscoe, 80 Mo. 643; State v. Anderson, 84 Mo. 524; State v. Fletchall, 31 Mo.App. 296. (2) An information disclosing on its face that it is based upon a complaint, will be presumed to be founded upon said complaint only, and not upon the belief, etc., of the prosecuting attorney. State v. Whitaker, 75 Mo.App. 184; State v. Fuser, 75 Mo.App. 263. And the information, when founded on a complaint, must set forth the same crime as the one charged in the complaint, or a grade of said crime. State v. Luman, 66 Mo.App. 472; State v. Cornell, 45 Mo.App. 94; State v. Washington, 78 Mo.App. 659.

Theodore Bruere for respondent.

OPINION

GOODE, J.

The appellants' bill of exceptions not having been filed in the time allowed by the circuit court, we shall confine our examination of the errors assigned to those going to the record proper. The information is challenged as fatally defective. It accuses the appellants of having obstructed, resisted and opposed a constable of St. Charles county in the service of an execution and in the attempt to serve, execute and levy an execution by unlawfully, willfully, knowingly and by force and violence assaulting and beating him whilst in the discharge of his official duty. The process under which the constable acted is recited in full in the information and instead of being an execution as charged, it was a fee bill for costs that accrued in the case of State v. Henry Ostmann, who was the husband of one of the defendants and the father of the other two. In informations for obstructing an officer in the service of process, the process ought to be recited, as was done in the present instance, in order that the court may see if it was a kind the officer had a right to execute. [State v. Henderson, 15 Mo. 486.] The information in all its charging clauses speaks of the process as an execution, and appellants insist these averments were so repugnant to the truth, as shown by the copy of the writ, as to make the information invalid. If this position were well taken we could not reverse the judgment on that account. It is alleged appellants knew the character in which the officer was acting, and as they are charged with having obstructed him in serving the writ and beating and assaulting him, the information is good for an assault at common law or under the general statute for breach of the peace. [State v. Phipps, 34 Mo.App. 400, and cases cited therein.] Appellants were punished by fines such as might be assessed for an assault or breach of the peace, the verdict being guilty without specifying the offense.

Another point made against the validity of the information is the omission of the prosecuting attorney to verify it by affidavit. A formal affidavit was filed with the prosecuting attorney by Albert Meyer, the assaulted official, and the information recites the fact and, further, that Meyer's complaint was filed with the information. This procedure is authorized by section 2749 of the Revised Statutes of 1899. The information, signed and filed by the prosecuting attorney in his official capacity, is good as an information before a justice of the peace; probably would have been good if not accompanied by the affidavit of the constable. [State v....