Streeter v. State
| Decision Date | 15 May 1925 |
| Citation | 104 So. 858,89 Fla. 400 |
| Parties | STREETER v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
En Banc.
Error to Criminal Court of Record, Duval County; James M. Peeler Judge.
H. J Streeter was convicted of attempting to bribe a police officer, and he brings error. Reversed, and new trial ordered, unless state desires to enter nolle prosequi.
Syllabus by the Court
In absence of basis in record for assignments of error, which attack sufficiency of information, they will not be considered, unless information is ineffectual to charge offense under laws. Where there is no basis in the record for assignments of error, which attack the sufficiency of the information, such assignments will not be considered, unless the information is whooly ineffectual to charge an offense under the laws.
On failure to assign errors on record, writ of error may be dismissed, except for good cause shown. Where the plaintiff in error fails to assign errors upon the record, the writ of error may be dismissed, except for good cause shown.
Defects in indictment and information should be reached by motion to quash, demurrer, or motion in arrest of judgment; if complaining party fails to attack indictment or information by motion to quash or demurrer, information or indictment will be liberally construed on motion in arrest of judgment. Defects in indictments and informations should be reached by a motion to quash, a demurrer or motion in arrest of judgment. Where the complaining party fails to avail himself of the two former methods of procedure and resorts to the latter, which is taken after verdict, the information or indictment will be given a liberal construction.
Motion for new trial is designed for use in attacking alleged errors committed in pais, and not alleged to be apparent on record. A motion for a new trial is not the method for attacking a defective information. Such a motion is designed for use only in attacking alleged errors committed in pais, and not errors alleged to be apparent on the record.
The information, which was prepared under section 5346, Revised General Statutes, examined, and found to be not wholly ineffectual to charge an offense under said section.
Charge of offering bribe to officer in relation to crime, which had been committed by third person, held not sustained by evidence failing to show that crime had been committed. Where, under section 5346, Revised General Statutes, the defendant is charged with corruptly offering any gift or gratuity with intention to influence an officer's action vote, opinion, decision, or judgment on any matter, question cause, or proceeding which may be then pending, or which may by law come or be brought before him in his official capacity, and such matter is alleged to be a crime which had been committed by a third person, is not sustained by evidence which fails to show that no crime had been committed, but the matter referred to in the information related only to an offense not yet committed, but was in contemplation only.
Thomas W. McIlvain, of Jacksonville, for plaintiff in error.
Rivers Buford, Atty. Gen., and Marvin C. McIntosh, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error was tried and convicted in the criminal court of record of Duval county upon an information charging him with the offense of knowingly and corruptly attempting to bribe a duly qualified police officer of the city of Jacksonville, by offering to give to the officer a sum of money to influence him in his official capacity as such police officer in a matter which was then before him in his official capacity.
The specific offer constituting the attempt to bribe the officer is alleged to be that the defendant Streeter offered to pay the officer $100, if he would fail to arrest one May Williams for a violation of the liquor laws.
There was no demurrer to the information, no motion to quash it, nor was there a motion in arrest of judgment.
The seventh ground of the motion for a new trial seeks to attack the information upon the ground that it is duplicitous. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third assignments of error attack the information upon as many different grounds. They are all argued in the brief, but there is no basis in the record for such assignments, unless the information is upon its face a mere brutum fulmen, a wholly ineffectual effort to charge an effense under the laws, an instrument so vague, indefinite, uncertain, inefficient in its terminology or phraseology, as not only to mislead and embarrass the accused in the preparation of his defense, but to wholly fail by a liberal construction to charge any offense.
An assignment of error is in the appellate court in the nature of a declaration. It performs the same office in the appellate court as a declaration in the court of original jurisdiction. It is an enumeration by the plaintiff in error of the errors alleged to have been committed by the court below in the trial of the case upon which a reversal of the judgment is sought. 3 C.J. 1328; 2 Tidd's Prac. 1168.
Our statute (section 2916, ...
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...procedure. Davidson v. Bezant, 101 Fla. 1296, 132 So. 488; St. Andrews Bay Lumber Co. v. Bernard, 106 Fla. 235, 143 So. 160; Streeter v. State, 89 Fla. 400, 104, So. The sole predicate for an assignment of error is an incorrect ruling of the trial judge on some question of evidentiary, proc......
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Nell v. State
...be considered as a juror of the court likely to be chosen to try the cause referred to upon the following day.' In Streeter v. State, 1925, 89 Fla. 400, 104 So. 858, Streeter was charged with offering an officer one hundred dollars 'if he would fail to arrest one May Williams for a violatio......
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Dowling v. State
... ... It is ... an elementary principle of criminal pleading that the ... necessary elements of a criminal offense alleged to have been ... committed by some one must be charged in the information or ... indictment. See 12 Stand. Ency. Proc. 321; Streeter v ... State, 89 Fla. 400, 104 So. 858; Morgan v ... State, 51 Fla. 76, 40 So. 828, 7 Ann. Cas. 773; ... Hunter v. State, 85 Fla. 91, 95 So. 115; Jackson ... v. State, 87 Fla. 262, 99 So. 548; Potter v ... State, 91 Fla. 938, 109 So. 91; Ladd v. State, ... 17 Fla. 215; Davis v. State, 51 ... ...
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Coleman v. State Ex Rel. Mitchell
... ... Deputy Tax Collector was 'unlawfully offered and promised ... a reward' and we are convinced that the information can ... not be supported by Section 7486. The statutory crime of ... bribery was considered by this Court in Streeter v ... State, 89 Fla. 400, 104 So. 858; Colson v ... State, 71 Fla. 267, 71 So. 277; State v ... Pearce, 14 Fla. 153 ... There ... is no error in the record and the judgment appealed from is ... hereby affirmed ... WHITFIELD ... and TERRELL, JJ., concur ... ...