State v. Williams
| Citation | 211 La. 782,30 So.2d 834 |
| Decision Date | 21 April 1947 |
| Docket Number | 38468. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Louisiana |
| Parties | STATE v. WILLIAMS. |
Rehearing Denied May 26, 1947.
Appeal from Criminal District Court, Parish of Orleans; William J. O'Hara, Judge.
George Wray Gill and Rudolph Becker, both of New Orleans, for appellant.
Fred S. LeBlanc, Atty. Gen., M. E. Culligan, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Herve Racivitch Dist. Atty., and R. E. LeCorgne, Jr., Asst Dist. Atty., both of New Orleans, for appellee.
Joseph A Williams, having been convicted and sentenced to serve ten months in the parish prison on an indictment charging him with having accepted from Otha Hayes $100 with the intention of corruptly influencing the conduct of an employee of the City of New Orleans to improperly approve the issuance of a Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience, prosecutes this appeal.
Although the record shows that the defendant reserved numerous bills of exceptions during the course of his trial, he perfected only nine of them and in presenting these here in argument, both orally and in brief, his counsel treated these nine indiscriminately, making no effort to consider them either in their natural sequence or separately, as is customary, and ultimately resolving the substances of the bills to only two complaints.
The first complaint is that the state erred in not allowing the defendant's prayer for oyer of certain documents in the possession of the district attorney, including statements made by the witnesses and confessions and admissions allegedly made by the defendant.
There is no merit to this complaint. The record shows that in answer to the prayer for oyer the state, through its attorney, declared it had no admissions or confessions made by the defendant in its possession and no such evidence was used or attempted to be used during the trial of the case. While certain statements of the defendant with reference to his acts in connection with the alleged crime with which he was charged were offered in evidence during the course of the trial these were neither admissions nor confessions. They were, instead, a part of the defendant's very acts upon which the charge against him was based and it is the jurisprudence of this state that an accused is not entitled to have the state furnish him, prior to trial, with the evidence upon which it intends to rely for his conviction. This includes evidence that has been reduced to writing by the prosecuting attorney for his convenience.
The defendant's next complaint is that he was improperly convicted, it being his contention (1) that the state failed to prove a necessary element of the crime as there is no evidence to establish the fact that the subject certificate of public necessity and convenience was improperly issued as charged in the indictment, and (2) in any event, that there is no evidence whatever in the record to show the $100 was accepted by the defendant with the intention that he should corruptly influence the conduct of an employee of the City of New Orleans, as alleged in the indictment.
The article of the Criminal Code under which the defendant was charged declares that 'Corrupt influencing is the giving or offering to give anything of apparent present or prospective value to, or the accepting or offering to accept anything of apparent present or prospective value by, any person, with the intention that the recipient shall corruptly influence the conduct of any of the persons named in Article 118 (public bribery) in relation to such person's position, employment or duty.' Article 120.
Both Articles 118, denouncing public bribery, and 120, denouncing corrupt influencing, are to be found in Title VII of the Criminal Code dealing with 'Offenses Affecting Organized Government' and are in Chapter 2 of this title that is headed 'Bribery and Intimidation.' The offense sought to be denounced in Article 118 is the bribery of (1) public officers or employees; (2) election officials; (3) grand or petit jurors; and (4) witnesses by the giving or offering to them of anything of value with the intention of influencing their conduct in relation to their position, both the giving and the receiving being condemned, while Article 120 seeks to bring within the reach of the law that class of persons who for a consideration endeavor to influence public officers and employees, election officials, jurors, and witnesses, or who hold themselves out as having influence with these persons, the one offering the money being equally as guilty under this article as the person who holds himself out as having influence with the public official.
It is our opinion, therefore, that while it was necessary to aver in the indictment and to...
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... ... State v. Lee, 173 La. 966, 139 So. 302; State v. Dallao, 187 La. 392, 175 So. 4; State v. Williams, 211 La. 782, 30 So.2d 834; State v. Mattio, 212 La. 284, 31 So.2d 801; State v. Simpson, supra. In State v. Williams, supra, certain statements of the defendant, of which he had been denied pre-trial inspection, but which were neither admissions nor confessions, were actually offered in evidence ... ...
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