State v. Reade.

• Decision Date: 19 January 1948
• Docket Number: Nos. 276-278.,s. 276-278.
• Citation: 56 A.2d 566,136 N.J.L. 432
• Parties: STATE v. READE.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

136 N.J.L. 432

56 A.2d 566

STATE

v.READE.

Nos. 276-278.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Jan. 19, 1948.

Walter Reade was indicted for criminal libel and he applies for writs of certiorari to review the validity of indictments.

Applications denied.

See also 55 A.2d 102.

October term, 1947, before DONGES, COLIE and EASTWOOD, JJ.

J. Victor Carton, Prosecutor of Pleas in and for Monmouth County, of Asbury Park, for State.

Harry Green, of Newark, for defendant-applicant.

EASTWOOD, Justice.

Defendant, Walter Reade, applies to this Court for three writs of certiorari to review the validity of indictments returned against him for criminal libel by the Grand Jury of Monmouth County. He advances the same grounds for the allowance of the three writs, viz.:

‘(a) The indictment fails to set forth and charge a crime and the same appears on the face of said indictment, and

‘(b) The indictment fails to set forth facts sufficient to constitute the crime of criminal libel.’

The three applications are submitted as one issue and to be decided accordingly. A motion to quash said indictments was made to and denied by the Honorable J. Edward Knight, presiding over the Monmouth County Court of Quarter Sessions. Subsequently, an application for writs of certiorari to review said indictments was made to and denied by Supreme Court Justice William A. Wachenfeld.

Under Point I, defendant contends that the three indictments are invalid because they fail to allege that the defamation charged against the defendant was in writing or printed and, therefore, the omission of said words makes the indictments fatally defective. Each of the indictments alleges that the defendant ‘did compose and publish a * * * defamatory libel of and concerning * * *’ and sets forth in full the alleged defamatory article. All textbook writers and the decisions of our Courts are in accord that ‘libel’ is any printed or written defamation of a person, published maliciously and without justification. Justice Hendrickson, speaking for the Court of Errors and Appeals in Benton v. State, 59 N.J.L. 551, at page 556, 36 A. 1041, at page 1043, stated: ‘It is the language of authority that any written or printed words are libelous which impute to a person that he has been guilty of any crime, fraud, dishonesty, immorality, vice, or dishonorable conduct, or which have a tendency to injure him in his office, profession, calling, or trade.’

The common acceptation and meaning of the word ‘libel’, is, as stated, a written or printed defamatory publication, as contrasted with an oral, or slanderous, statement.

Under Point II, defendant contends that the indictments do not set forth facts to consistute the crime of libel; that the articles alleged to have been published by defendant are not libelous per se. We find no merit to this contention. In Benton v. State, supra, it was held, inter alia:

‘The charges made by this article are so clearly within the range of criminal libel, as thus defined, that further discussion on this point seems unnecessary.

‘It is equally plain that no valid objection lies to the fact that there are no innuendoes set forth in this indictment in connection with the libelous words. The office of an innuendo, in such a connection, is to express and render certain the meaning of equivocal or uncertain language, or to bring out some latent meaning in the words, necessary to fix their defamatory character. It has a further office, to explain to whom the defamatory language refers where that is left uncertain without it....