State v. S. Robitshek

• Decision Date: 21 January 1895
• Docket Number: 9041
• Citation: State v. S. Robitshek, 61 N.W. 1023, 60 Minn. 123 (Minn. 1895)
• Parties: STATE OF MINNESOTA v. S. ROBITSHEK
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

61 N.W. 1023

60 Minn. 123

STATE OF MINNESOTA v. S. ROBITSHEK

No. 9041

Supreme Court of Minnesota

January 21, 1895

Appeal from an order of the municipal court of Minneapolis, Holt J., denying a motion for a new trial. Upon the complaint of a private individual, defendant was arraigned and found guilty of the offense of keeping his saloon for selling liquor open on Sunday, after a former conviction for a similar offense. Reversed.

Order reversed, and, on remanding the case, defendant will be discharged.

S Meyers, for appellant.

D. F Simpson and M. D. Purdy, for respondent.

OPINION

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 the violation of this section or any provision 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. 507, 5 N.W. 959; City of 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 the power of any private person to prosecute in case of the violation of the provisions of an ordinance; and, under the terms of the city charter (chapter 11, § 7), there can be no...