State v. Weissman

• Decision Date: 07 June 1927
• Docket Number: No. 114.,114.
• Citation: 137 A. 718
• Parties: STATE v. WEISSMAN et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

137 A. 718

STATE

v. WEISSMAN et al.

No. 114.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 7, 1927.

Error to Court of Quarter Sessions, Hudson County.

Louis Weissman and another were convicted for conspiracy to prevent and obstruct justice, and they bring error. Reversed, and a venire de novo awarded.

Argued October Term, 1926, before KALISCH, KATZENBACH, and LLOYD, JJ.

Feinberg & Feinberg and Maurice C. Brigadier, all of Bayonne, for plaintiffs in error.

John Milton, Prosecutor of the Pleas, of Jersey City, for defendant in error.

PER CURIAM. The plaintiffs in error, together with one Patrick Leehan, were indicted by the Hudson county grand jury for a conspiracy to prevent and obstruct justice, etc. Patrick Leehan was acquitted. The plaintiffs in error were convicted.

There is a single assignment of error which presents the facts and the legal question arising therefrom, and upon which facts the plaintiffs in error rely for a judgment of reversal.

The assignment reads as follows:

"That, after the jury, before whom the issue of facts in the above-entitled cause were tried, had retired to their room for the purpose of considering and weighing the evidence and arriving at a verdict in the said cause, the deputy sheriff, in whose care and custody the jury had been intrusted during their deliberation, and who had been sworn when the jury was intrusted to his custody, by the prescribed oath, in response to a knock from the room in which the jury was deliberating, opened the door of said room and received from the foreman of the jury a paper upon which the following request for instructions from the court was written: 'May the jury convict two of the defendants and acquit the third?' The deputy sheriff received said request for instructions and without having any communication whatever with any of the jurors closed the door of the jury room and handed the said written request to the sergeant at arms of the said court. The sergeant at arms immediately telephoned to the judge, who had retired to his home and repeated the request over the telephone to the said judge, and the said judge instructed him to write the answer 'Yes' upon the said written request for instructions and return the same to the jury. That thereupon the said sergeant at arms delivered the said papers with requests for instructions and answer aforesaid to the deputy sheriff in charge of the said jury, who, in turn, knocked on the door and transmitted the paper to the foreman of tie jury and...