State v. Robitshek

• Decision Date: 21 January 1895
• Parties: STATE v. ROBITSHEK.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

60 Minn. 123

61 N.W. 1023

STATE

v.ROBITSHEK.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Jan. 21, 1895.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

It is within the power of the council of the city of Minneapolis to enact that no prosecution for the violation of the provisions of a specified ordinance shall be commenced except upon the complaint of a police officer of the city.

Appeal from municipal court of Minneapolis; Andrew Holt, Judge.

On complaint of one who was not a police officer, S. Robitshek was convicted of keeping his saloon open on Sunday, in violation of a city ordinance, and from an order denying a new trial he appeals. Reversed.

M. D. Purdy and S. Meyers, for appellant.

H. W. Childs, Atty. Gen., Geo. B. Edgerton, and F. Simpson, for the State.

COLLINS, J.

We are required in this case to determine the validity of that part of a section of an ordinance of the city of Minneapolis which provides that “no prosecution shall be commenced for a violation of this section or any provisions thereof except upon complaint of a police officer of said city”; the court below having disregarded such condition, and allowed a private individual to make the complaint on which defendant was tried and convicted of a violation of one of the provisions of the section. The question is whether the city council had the power to enact this clause, and thus prohibit its citizens from initiating by formal complaint a prosecution for the violation of an ordinance.

For the purposes of this case, we assume, without deciding, that every man is of common right entitled to prefer an accusation against a party whom he believes to be guilty of a crime; and, further, that it is his right to have a prosecution commenced and carried on upon such complaint. Yet this fact, if it be one, has no bearing upon the case before us. It has repeatedly been decided by this court, as it has elsewhere, that municipal ordinances are not criminal statutes; that violations thereof are not crimes, nor are such violations governed by the rules of the criminal law, save in certain specified exceptional particulars. State v. Oleson, 26 Minn. 515, 5 N. W. 959;St. Paul v. Smith, 27 Minn. 364, 7 N. W. 734;State v. Lee, 29 Minn. 445, 13 N. W. 913;City of Mankato v. Arnold, 36 Minn. 62, 30 N. W. 305;State v. West, 42 Minn. 147, 43 N. W. 845;State v. Sexton, 42 Minn. 154, 43 N. W. 845;State v. Harris, 50 Minn. 128, 52 N. W. 387, 531. Prosecutions thereunder are in the name of the state by express provision of the charter, as a matter, probably, of convenience; and they are, at most, merely quasi criminal in form. They are simply local police regulations or by-laws for the government of the municipality, and have no reference to or connection with the administration of the criminal laws of the state. Originally, the only method of enforcing them was by civil action, brought by the municipality in its own name, to recover such penalty as was prescribed for a violation. There can be no doubt that, when they were so enforced, the whole matter of such enforcement was necessarily within the exclusive control of the municipality itself. It alone could bring an action to enforce and collect the penalty, and therefore it was beyond...