State v. Richards

• Decision Date: 13 August 1917
• Docket Number: 14005.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. RICHARDS.

167 P. 47

97 Wash. 587

STATE v. RICHARDS.

No. 14005.

Supreme Court of Washington

August 13, 1917

Department 1. Appeal from Superior Court, Clallam County; John M Ralston, Judge.

Frank J. Richards was convicted of crime of blackmail, and appeals. Affirmed.

L. F. Chester, of Seattle, for appellant.

Frank L. Plummer, T. F. Trumbull, and Rose & Lewis, all of Port Angeles, for the State.

MORRIS J.

Appellant was charged jointly with Edgar G. Mills with the crime of blackmail, and appeals from a separate trial and conviction.

The first question raised is the sufficiency of the information. The information is too long to set forth as a whole. It charges that the appellant and Edgar G. Mills, with the intent to extort and gain $24,000 from one Thompson unlawfully and feloniously, sought to compel Thompson to execute to appellant a 99-year lease of certain real property owned by Thompson and sign other valuable papers, under threats of accusing Thompson of assault, blackmail seduction, larceny, and other crimes, and with publishing a certain document in which Thompson is accused of these crimes in detail. Our statute (section 2613, Rem. Code) thus defines blackmail:

'Every person who, with intent thereby to extort or gain any money or other property or to compel or induce another to make, subscribe, execute, alter or destroy and valuable security or instrument or writing affecting or intending to affect any cause of action or defense, or any property, or to influence the action of any public officer, or to do or abet or procure any illegal or wrongful act, shall threaten directly or indirectly--(1) To accuse any person of a crime or (2) To do any injury to any person or to any property; or (3) To publish or connive at publishing any libel; or (4) To expose or impute to any person any deformity or disgrace; or (5) To expose any secret, shall be punished,' etc.

The information was clearly sufficient, even to its disgusting detail, as was the evidence, to sustain the information and conviction. The publication threatened was grossly libelous. The attempt to extort money or valuable property was plain.

Appellant's main argument is addressed to three contentions:

First, if appellant believed he was justly entitled to that which he demanded, such belief is a defense, as the act complained of would then lack the essential element of 'intent thereby to extort or gain.' It must be admitted that, to commit the crime charged, there must be an intent to extort or gain; but that does not mean that one can by the employment of the means used in this instance compel another to bestow upon him that which he thinks or believes he is entitled to receive. What the statute means in the use of the word 'intent' is that the purpose of the act, that which the actor had in mind in doing the act, was to extort or gain, and this purpose is accomplished when, by use of the means defined in the statute, one seeks in an unlawful manner to obtain money or property from another. The statute is directed against the means used, as well as the purpose sought to be accomplished.

The intent is not necessarily limited to 'gain,' but includes 'to extort'--that is, to gain by wrongful methods; to obtain in an unlawful manner; to compel a payment by means of threats of injury to person, property, or reputation. In this sense one can commit this crime, though he is of the opinion that the money thus sought is actually due him. The law does not countenance forceful and unlawful collection even of just debts, and when one uses the methods set forth in this statute to obtain money or property, he commits the crime defined in the statute, irrespective of his belief that in so doing he is only attempting to obtain that which he is entitled to receive. State v. Logan, 104 La. 760, 29 So. 336; State v. Bruce, 24 Me. 71; Commonwealth v. Coolidge, 128 Mass. 55; Cohen v. State, 37 Tex. Cr. R. 118, 38 S.W. 1005; State v. Hollyway, 41 Iowa, 200, 20 Am. Rep. 586; In re A. Sherin, 27 S.D. 232, 130 N.W. 761, 40 L. R. A. (N. S.) 801, Ann. Cas. 1913D, 446.

As to the fact there is no warrant for any such claim of right. Appellant sought to compel Thompson first to execute to him a 99-year lease of certain real property. There is no contention that Richards had either legal or equitable interest in this property, or that he ever claimed he had. Second, he sought to compel Thompson to purchase some hotel stock at a fixed price of $24,000. While Richards owned this stock, it having been given to him while he was acting as manager of the hotel property, he had no arrangement or agreement with Thompson, whereby Thompson was in any sense obligated to purchase the stock at Richards' price, or at any other price. The appellant was given the benefit of all that he was entitled to under the law when the court instructed the jury that intent was an essential element of the crime charged, and as such must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. In so far as rulings upon the rejection of evidence are embodied in this assignment of error, we find nothing that would indicate that appellant was deprived of presenting fairly and fully every material or relevant fact to the jury.

The next contention is error in permitting appellant's codefendant Mills to testify what he said to appellant when advising with him as to whether or not what was done could be done and escape criminal liability. Mills is a lawyer, and the main point is that his testimony was the unpermitted disclosure of a privileged communication between attorney and client. Mills has not yet been tried. So far as here disclosed, his part in the affair was to consult with Richards as to whether or not the contemplated act would be blackmail, assist in the preparation of the 99-year lease and to carry the demands, threats, and libelous publication consisting of 45 typewritten pages, roughly bound together, from Seattle to...