State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 30 April 1883
• Citation: 77 Mo. 310
• Parties: THE STATE v. WILLIAMS, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

77 Mo. 310

THE STATE

v.WILLIAMS, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

April Term, 1883.

Appeal from St. Louis Court of Appeals.

AFFIRMED.

Wm. Bush for appellant.

No punishment for a common law offense can be imposed which is for life or indefinite or unlimited. Cooley's Const. Lim., (3 Ed.) p. 328; Done v. People, 5 Park. 364; State v. Danforth, 3 Conn. 115; Oakley v. Aspinwall, 3 Comst. 568. The statute allows the pleading of conclusions of law, and is a special law applying only to a certain class of defendants and not uniformly to all. Wiggins v. Graham, 51 Mo. 17; Pier v. Heinrichoffen, 52 Mo. 333. Defendant's imprisonment in the penitentiary could only be proved by the record. State v. Rugan, 68 Mo. 214.

D. H. McIntyre, Attorney General, for the State.

NORTON, J.

The indictment in this case is based on section 1561 of the Revised Statutes, and charges defendant with the crime of obtaining $3.10, the property of another, by the use of a trick, deception and false representation. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the penitentiary, which judgment was affirmed on defendant's appeal to the St. Louis court of appeals, and from this judgment of affirmance he has appealed to this court; and the first point urged by counsel as a ground for reversal is, that said section 1561, on which the indictment is framed, is in conflict with section 25, article 2 of the constitution, which provides “that excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.” The punishment for the offense with which defendant is charged, prescribed in section 1561, is by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term not less than two years; and as no maximum punishment is provided for in said section, a person convicted of the offense defined therein might be punished by imprisonment for life, under section 1660, Revised Statutes, which provides “that when any offender is declared by law punishable upon conviction by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term not less than any specified number of years, and no limit to the duration of such imprisonment is declared, the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment during his natural life, or for any number of years not less than such as are prescribed.”

1. CRIMINAL LAW: constitutional law: false pretenses.

That punishment in the penitentiary is not such cruel and unusual punishment as is forbidden by the section of the constitution invoked by counsel, we think is clear, because it is the punishment prescribed, not only in this, but in all the states, for crimes (less than capital) committed against persons or property or the safety of well ordered society, which in legislative estimation amount to felonies, and such punishment has never been regarded as either cruel or unusual. The interdict of the constitution against the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments would apply to such punishments as amount to torture, or such as would shock the mind of every man possessed of common feeling, such for instance as drawing and quartering the culprit, burning him at the stake, cutting off his nose, ears or limbs, starving him to death, or such as was inflicted by an act of parliament as late as the 22 Henry VIII, authorizing one Rouse to be thrown into boiling water and boiled to death for the offense of poisoning the family of the Bishop of Rochester. As was said in the case of James v. Commonwealth, 12 Serg. & Rawle 220, “it must be a very glaring and extreme case to justify the court in pronouncing a punishment unconstitutional on account of its cruelty.” If under the statute in question, a punishment by imprisonment for life of one who is convicted of the offense therein defined, should be inflicted, it might well be said that such punishment would be excessive, or rather entirely disproportioned to the magnitude of the offense, yet notwithstanding this, there is high authority for saying that “the question whether the punishment is too severe and disproportionate to the offense, is for the legislature to...