State v. Watts
| Decision Date | 11 December 1886 |
| Citation | 2 S.W. 342,48 Ark. 56 |
| Parties | STATE v. WATTS |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
APPEAL from Sebastian Circuit Court, Greenwood District.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded.
Dan W Jones, Attorney-General, for appellant.
The appellee was charged with malicious mischief in destroying a telephone line. Tr., 4 & 5. A demurrer to it was sustained. Tr. 6. At the time the offense was committed the statute making such lines the subject of the offense charged was not passed. But the malicious destruction of any class of property completes the offense at the common law. In the case of Loomis v. Edgerton, 19 Wend. 419, it is said that a frequent reference to statute authority for this crime by no means showed that the common law did not already reach it. See, also, People v. Smith, 5 Cowen, 258. In this case the object destroyed was of such a nature--being inanimate--that the appellee could have had no malice against it, but the wanton destruction charged supplies the place of express malice against the stockholders of the company and it was not necessary to charge express malice against them when the act set forth was equivalent to it. It is unlike the cases where stock are concerned in breaking fences. No special statute having provided for the punishment of destroying a telephone line, section 567, Mansfield's Digest, becomes operative.
Levi Watts was indicted in the Sebastian circuit court, for the Greenwood district, for malicious mischief committed by him on the 10th day of February, 1885, in the Greenwood district by then and there unlawfully, wilfully, maliciously and mischievously cutting, tearing down, injuring and breaking the telephone wire of the Fort Smith, Greenwood and Waldron Telephone Company, it being of the value of fifty-five dollars. He demurred to the indictment, and the court sustained the demurrer and discharged him.
The only question in this case is, was the act charged in the indictment an indictable offense at common law? There was no statute making it a crime at the time it is alleged to have been committed.
It is difficult to state with minute precision, what is necessary to constitute malicious mischief at common law. It has been so much legislated upon, and at such an early day, that its common law limits are indistinct. Blackstone classes it along with larceny and forgery, and, after treating of larceny, says: ...
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