State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 01 July 1880
• Docket Number: CASE No. 892.
• Parties: STATE v. WILLIAMS.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

13 S.C. 546

STATE

v.WILLIAMS.

CASE No. 892.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Jul. 20th, 1880.

1. This court will not follow a former decision standing alone, without regard to the grounds upon which such decision was based. The principle of stare decisis stated.

2. The Court of General Sessions has jurisdiction of cases of petit larceny, as the punishment therefor provided by law is not limited to a fine of $100, or imprisonment for thirty days. Const., Art. I., § 19.

3. State v. Harper, 6 S. C. 464, overruled.

Before HUDSON, J., Chesterfield, February, 1880.

The defendant, Jacob Williams, was convicted of petit larceny, under an indictment charging him with the larceny of two wagon wheels and two taps, of the value of $22, in October, 1879.

The report of the presiding judge is as follows:

There was conflicting testimony upon the question of the value of the property alleged to have been stolen, as well as upon the question of the guilt of the defendant. The weight of the testimony was, in the opinion of the court, in favor of a valuation above $20. The jury, however, being the sole and exclusive judges of the testimony, under full instruction from the court as to the law of the case, and the distinction between grand and petit larceny, rendered a verdict against the defendant for the latter. Whereupon his attorney moved the court in arrest of judgment and to discharge the defendant, upon the ground that the Court of General Sessions is without jurisdiction of the crime of petit larceny, and without authority to pronounce sentence upon the defendant in this case. After full argument by the solicitor and counsel for the defendant upon the motion, it was overruled, and the defendant was sentenced to six months confinement in the state penitentiary at hard labor.

In support of the judgment, I assign the following reasons: The case of State v. Harper, 6 S. C. 464, is relied upon by the defendant's counsel as conclusive of the law of this case. I am aware of the grave responsibility I have taken in disregarding that case, but I know that there is widespread dissatisfaction among the lawyers of the state with the law as therein announced, and a general desire that it be reviewed and re-affirmed or overruled. In no way can this be effected, so far as I can see, unless it be by appeal from a Circuit judgment in conflict with it. Such a judgment I have rendered in the present case, because the law of that case (State v. Harper) has never carried conviction to my mind, and is a fruitful source of embarrassment in administering the law of larceny in the state. After a careful examination of the constitution of the state and the law of the land, I can find nothing which prohibits the Court of General Sessions from pronouncing judgment upon a verdict like the one rendered in this instance. It is a well-established doctrine of criminal law and practice, that if one be charged with a grave offence, which includes one of an inferior degree, the jury may discharge the defendant of the higher crime and convict him of the less atrocious, and judgment will be pronounced for the lesser crime so found, unless authority so to do is denied the court by clear and binding negative enactment. Neither in the constitution nor the statute law does it appear that to the Court of General Sessions is jurisdiction of the crime of petit larceny denied; Section 18, Article IV. of the constitution, gives to it “ exclusive jurisdiction of all crimes not otherwise provided for by law.” Clearly, then, if the jurisdiction of a crime is otherwise provided for by law, the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court of General Sessions would be taken away, but not its jurisdiction; that would remain and be concurrent with that of the other tribunal, unless to the inferior tribunal exclusive jurisdiction should be given, or unless to the superior tribunal all jurisdiction should be in totidem verbis, denied. The Court of General Sessions retains exclusive jurisdictionover any and all crimes, unless jurisdiction thereof be conferred upon an inferior court, in which event the two would hold concurrent jurisdiction. But if, in the enactment, jurisdiction is entirely denied to the Court of General Sessions, or exclusive jurisdiction is conferred upon the inferior courts, then, and not otherwise, does the Court of General Sessions lose its authority.

A statute, which simply confers jurisdiction of a crime on an inferior court generally and not exclusively, cannot be construed to deprive the Court of General Sessions of its jurisdiction, but the jurisdiction would remain concurrent with that of the inferior court. The language of the constitution in Section 18, Article IV., is broader and more comprehensive in preserving a general criminal jurisdiction to the Courts of General Sessions, than it is in Sections 15 and 16 of the same article, in conferring a general civil jurisdiction upon the Courts of Common Pleas, yet the Supreme Court has not hesitated to declare that the latter court has concurrent civil jurisdiction of contracts, in which jurisdiction has, by the constitution, been given to justices of the peace, and by statute to trial justices. See Burge v. Willis, 5 S. C. 212.

The reasoning of the court in this case is pithy, satisfactory and conclusive, and is in harmony with the uniform tenor of decisions of the courts of England and America in similar cases.

It accords with the judgment of our own Court of Appeals in State v. Walker, 14 Rich. 37, and State v. Sullivan, 14 Rich. 282, and the cases therein cited; and also accords with the reasoning and judgment of our Supreme Court in State v. Simmons, 4 S. C. 72. All these cases were relied upon by Attorney-General Melton in his able argument in State v. Harper, but they are summarily disposed of by the chief justice in the conclusion of the judgment, by the declaration that they have no application to the point presented in State v. Harper. These cases and the cases from England, cited by the court, all hold the doctrine as one unquestioned, that “nothing shall be intended to be without the jurisdiction of a superior court but that which specially appears to be so, and nothing shall be intended to be without the jurisdiction of an inferior court but that which is expressly alleged.” In Burge v. Willis, it is declared that when a court is vested with general original jurisdiction under the constitution, it cannot be divested of that jurisdiction by the legislature establishing another court with the same or a like jurisdiction. “Unless there be that in the constitution of the state which deprives the Court of General Sessions of jurisdiction of the crime of petit larceny, or which empowers the legislature to do so, it is clear, upon authority, that the jurisdiction remains. The most that can be said is, that the constitution, by Section 19, Article I., confers exclusive jurisdiction upon justices of the peace, or other officers authorized by law (to wit, trial justices,) of ‘offences less than felony, and in which the punishment does not exceed a fine of one hundred dollars or imprisonment for thirty days;’ and in Section 22 of Article IV., jurisdiction of prosecutions for assault and battery and other penal offences less than felony, punishable by fine only.”

It certainly cannot be successfully contended that the crime of petit larceny is embraced in either of these sections, nor has the legislature, since the adoption of the constitution, by any enactment, so defined the crime of petit larceny, and limited its punishment as to bring it within the category of offences set forth in either of said sections. From a proper construction of the acts of the legislature in connection with the strong language of the constitution in Article IV., Section 18, I am more inclined to the opinion that courts of trial justice are entirely without jurisdiction of the crime of petit larceny, than I am to the opinion that they have exclusive jurisdiction of that grave offence, separated, as it often is, from the felony of grand larceny, by a distinction scarcely perceptible, and sometimes infinitessimal. For the crime of grand larceny, to wit, the stealing of goods of the value of $20, a convict may be and often is punished by confinement at hard labor in the state penitentiary for years, while, under the law of State v. Harper, one guilty of stealing goods of the value of $19, under the most aggravating circumstances, cannot be punished by imprisonment exceeding thirty days in the county jail, nor by fine exceeding $100, which fine, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is nugatory, because of the poverty of the convict. It would require the law to be so written in the most explicit terms to convince a rational mind that the legislatureor the people in convention assembled, intended that it should be thus. A distinction so utterly at variance with common sense and justice, cannot be rectified by the law-making power of the land too soon, if it exists in the constitution or in the statute law. We are constrained to think that a correct interpretation of the constitution and laws of the state will remove this anomaly and bring order out of confusion, regarding the crime of larceny.

To justices of the peace represented by trial justices, the constitution gives jurisdiction of the crime of assault and battery, yet the Courts of General Sessions are constantly trying accusations of this offence. Original jurisdiction in cases of bastardy is also conferred upon this inferior tribunal, and yet numerous cases of bastardy are being tried in the superior court; and so of the whole catalogue of misdemeanors, except this most aggravated of all, petit larceny, and for its commission a premium is held out by making the punishment thereof a mere farce.

Chief Justice Moses, in delivering the opinion of the court in State v. Harper, on page 471, in speaking of the intention of the framers of the constitution, says: ...