State v. Walsh

• Decision Date: 09 June 1890
• Citation: 45 N.W. 721,43 Minn. 444
• Parties: State of Minnesota v. Patrick Walsh
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

45 N.W. 721

43 Minn. 444

State of Minnesota v. Patrick Walsh

Supreme Court of Minnesota

June 9, 1890

Appeal by defendant from an order of the district court for Goodhue county, McCluer, J., presiding, refusing a new trial.

J. C McClure, for appellant.

Moses E. Clapp, Attorney General, and F. M. Wilson, for the State.

OPINION

Dickinson, J.

The defendant was convicted under an indictment for the act of cutting and removing a section of fence on each side of a strip of land occupied by a railroad company for its railway track across the defendant's land. The fence had been constructed by the railroad company to inclose the land thus occupied by it. The defendant appears to have removed the fences to facilitate the driving of his stock from one part of the farm to another. On the part of the state, it is only claimed that the act of the defendant was criminal by force of section 476 of the Penal Code, which, so far as need be here recited, declares that "a person who (1) displaces, removes, injures, or destroys a rail, sleeper switch, bridge, viaduct, culvert, embankment, or structure or any part thereof, attached or appertaining to, or connected with a railway, whether operated by steam or by horses, * * * is punishable as follows;" the prescribed penalty making the prohibited acts felonies.

The application of two well-settled and familiar rules of construction exclude the act of the defendant from the operation of this statute.

A statute is not to be deemed to make an act criminal, which would not have been so except for the statute, unless the intention of the legislature to effect that result is apparent, and not seriously doubtful; and if, applying the proper principles of construction to ascertain the intention of the legislature expressed in the law, it remains fairly doubtful whether it was intended to embrace acts or conduct like that under consideration, such acts or conduct must be regarded as not within the statute.

It is a principle of statutory construction, everywhere recognized and acted upon, not only with respect to penal statutes, but to those affecting only civil duties and rights, that, where words particularly designating specific acts or things are followed by and associated with words of general import comprehensively designating acts or things, the latter are generally to be regarded as comprehending only matters of the same kind or class as those particularly stated. They are to be deemed to...