State v. Seitz
| Decision Date | 24 May 1940 |
| Citation | 40 Del. 572,14 A.2d 710 |
| Court | Court of General Sessions of Delaware |
| Parties | STATE v. ALFRED J. P. SEITZ |
Court of General Sessions for New Castle County, Indictment for malfeasance in office, No. 69, May Term, 1940.
Clair John Killoran and Thomas Herlihy, Jr., Deputy Attorneys-General, for the State.
Francis Reardon and Abraham Hoffman for the defendant.
OPINION
RODNEY, J., charged the jury, in part, as follows:
The defendant, Alfred J. P. Seitz, has been indicted by the grand jury of this county for an offense known as "Malfeasance in office." There is no specific statute dealing in detailed terms with the offense of malfeasance in office, but there are many offenses at the common law for which no specific statute exists. By Sec. 5180, Revised Code of Delaware, 1935, it is provided "assaults batteries, nuisances, and all other offenses indictable at common law, and not specially provided for by statute, shall be deemed misdemeanors, and shall be punishable" as the law directs. This indictment is framed under the quoted section.
Malfeasance in office may generally be defined to be the wrongful or unjust doing of some official act which the doer has no right to perform, accompanied by some evil intent or motive, or where it is done with such gross negligence as to be equivalent to fraud.
The indictment in the present case consists of six counts, but it is agreed that under the second count no testimony has been presented, and that count will not be considered by you.
[The court then briefly reviewed the charges in the different counts which, by varying language, and by the citation of 16 specific cases, charged that the justice had (1) unlawfully received payment of fines imposed by him, (2) unlawfully remitted fines after said fines had been paid, and (3) unlawfully misappropriated said fines.]
We have thus given you the contentions of the State. These are given merely as contentions and with no expression or indication on our part as to whether or not these contentions have been at all supported by the evidence.
The defendant denies that he is guilty of any offense. He denies that he has acted unlawfully or corruptly. He has introduced evidence with reference to all or some of the specific cases relied upon by the State, and this evidence was offered as having a tendency to show the innocence of the defendant in connection with these transactions.
We call your attention to two statutes of this State. Section 4459, Revised Code of Delaware 1935, under the title of "Justice Of The Peace," provides:
We say that so long as those statutes remain in their present form no Justice of the Peace has a right to receive a fine which has been imposed by him. He is the judge, and by the express terms of the statute is prohibited from personally collecting the fines.
The defendant does not deny that he has personally collected some of the fines, but he contends that it was necessary so to do because, the arrests being made by highway police, no constable was present, and the defendant presented evidence, in the nature of a custom, of the similar practice and procedure of other Justices of the Peace over a long period of years.
This testimony has been admitted by us, but because we are unwilling to hold that a direct violation of the statute may be excused by a series of other acts by former officials, we now give you the real basis of...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Frabizzio v. State
... ... case, awarding the punishment to be inflicted. Black Law ... Dict. (3d.Ed.) 1602. A fine is a judgment of the Court ... Dasey v. State, 21 Del. 457, 5 Penne. 457, ... 62 A. 300; and payment thereof satisfies the judgment, ... State v. Seitz, 40 Del. 572, 1 Terry 572, ... 14 A.2d 710. A fine is just as much a sentence as is a term ... of imprisonment; in fact, it is the only sentence which can ... be legally imposed ... [59 A.2d 454] ... for the present offense. Accordingly, if the amount paid by ... the defendant herein was ... ...
-
Raduszewski v. Superior Court In and For New Castle County
...by statute, made crimes in Delaware but, by reason of 11 Del.C. § 105, they are carried into our law as common law crimes. State v. Seitz, 1 Terry 572, 14 A.2d 710; State v. Wallace, Del., 214 A.2d 886. The crimes are, respectively, the wrongful doing of some official act, and the wrongful ......
-
State v. Wallace
...City Council, either personally or through an accomplice, under the circumstances alleged in the indictment, State v. Seitz, 40 Del. 572, 1 Terry 572, 14 A.2d 710 (1940), solicited a bribe, as I have defined that crime to you, then your verdict should be, 'Guilty as to Count On the other ha......