State v. Threadgill

• Decision Date: 31 January 1877
• Citation: 76 N.C. 17
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. JOHN H. THREADGILL.

76 N.C. 17

STATE

v.JOHN H. THREADGILL.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

January Term, 1877.

INDICTMENT for misdemeanor under ch. 111, § 31, Battle's Revisal, tried at Fall Term, 1875, of ANSON Superior Court, before Buxton, J.

The indictment charged defendant with selling spirituous liquors, in violation of an ordinance of the town of Wadesboro. The facts, necessary to an understanding of the case, are sufficiently stated in the opinion of this Court.

Verdict and judgment against the defendant; from which he appealed.

Attorney General, for the State .

Messrs. Dargan & Pemberton, for defendant .

BYNUM, J.

The defendant is indicted in the Superior Court for the violation of an ordinance of the town of Wadesboro. The defendant insists that the Court has no jurisdiction of the offence charged, and that His Honor erred in his instructions to the jury.

I. The jurisdiction. The ordinance was passed in May, 1873, and prohibits the sale of spirituous liquors within the town in the quantity of a quart or less, without the license of the Mayor and the payment of twenty-five dollars, under a penalty of ten dollars or ten days imprisonment. The State claims that the violation of this by-law is indictable in the Superior Courts by virtue of Bat. Rev., ch. 111, § 31, which section is thus worded: “Any person or persons violating any ordinance of any city or town of this State, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be subject to the provisions of this chapter.”

Whether the Legislature meant by this act to confer upon the municipal corporations which created the offences, the jurisdiction to try the offenders, or upon the Superior Courts, is a question admitting of no doubt. The penalty for violating the ordinance is fixed within the limits of the Justice's jurisdiction, and by consequence the jurisdiction of the Superior Courts is expressly excluded by the Constitution, Art. IV. §§ 33-15. But it is insisted by the State, and His Honor so held the law to be, that when the Statute declared the violation of a town ordinance to be a misdemeanor, without limiting the punishment within a Justices jurisdiction, that the punishment of the offence was at the discretion of the Court, and the Superior Court therefore had exclusive jurisdiction. If this be so, it was superflous in the town to affix a penalty to the violation of the ordinance. The corporation has no jurisdiction and therefore cannot enforce it, and the Superior Court, because it has jurisdiction, cannot notice it! The jurisdiction cannot be concurrent, because they have not the same power of punishment. A plain principle governs the case. It is this: municipal...