State v. Sandt
| Decision Date | 03 November 1920 |
| Citation | 111 A. 651 |
| Parties | STATE v. SANDT et al. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Error to Court of Quarter Sessions, Hudson County.
Max Sandt and Frederick Tietjen were convicted of keeping a disorderly house, and they bring error. Reversed.
Argued June term, 1920, before GUMMERE, C. J., and BERGEN and KATZENBACH, JJ.
Robert V. Kinkhead, of Jersey City, for plaintiffs in error.
Pierre P. Garven, of Bayonne, for the State.
The defendants were convicted in the Hudson quarter sessions on an indictment charging them with keeping a disorderly house. Two grounds of reversal are argued. The first of which challenges the legal correctness of an instruction given by the court on the question of reasonable doubt. The instruction was:
The court first charged that if the defendants were convicted it must be upon testimony which left in the minds of the jury no reasonable doubt of their guilt. This was correct, and if the court had given no further instruction, it could not be successfully challenged, but in the same connection the jury was told, in substance and effect, that they must be satisfied that the men were not guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, before they could be acquitted. This put on the defendants the burden of showing that they were innocent beyond a reasonable doubt when by law they are to be assumed innocent until the state overcomes that presumption, and establishes the guilt of the defendants beyond a reasonable doubt. The last clause quoted, "but if you have no such reasonable doubt you ought to convict them," is open to the construction, and perhaps reasonably so, as referring to a doubt of innocence and not of their guilt. It is so ambiguous that it manifestly tended to mislead the jury. That other parts of the charge on this subject were correct does not cure the trouble, for a jury is not required to determine what part of a contradictory charge is correct. The part of the charge objected to is unsound in law and prejudicial to the defendants.
The other ground urged for reversal is the refusal of the court to charge the request of the defendant as follows:
"One...
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... ... erroneous instruction. How, therefore, can it be said that ... appellant was not prejudiced? (State v. Judd, 20 ... Mont. 420, 51 P. 1033; Weber v. State, 2 Okla. Crim ... 329, 101 P. 355; Rea v. State, 3 Okla. Crim. 269, ... 105 P. 381; State v. Sandt, 95 N.J.L. 49, 111 A ... 651; Weber v. State, 183 Wis. 85, 197 N.W. 193. See, ... also, State v. Webb, 6 Idaho 428, 55 P. 892; ... State v. Bowker, 40 Idaho 74, 80, 231 P. 706.) ... It is ... also urged that the case was so "clear cut" and the ... evidence so conclusive that the ... ...
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