Thomas v. State
| Decision Date | 06 June 1895 |
| Citation | 107 Ala. 61,17 So. 941 |
| Parties | THOMAS v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Sumter county court; W. R. De Loach, Judge.
Lee Thomas was convicted of petit larceny, and appeals. Affirmed.
The appellant was tried and convicted for petit larceny. The prosecution was commenced by a complaint sworn out before the judge of the county court. This complaint did not end with the expression "against the peace and dignity of the state of Alabama." The defendant demurred to the complaint on the ground that it fails to allege that the offense of which he was charged was "against the peace and dignity of the state of Alabama." This demurrer was overruled, and the defendant duly excepted. The evidence introduced for the state tended to show that the defendant was guilty of the larceny charged in the complaint. The overruling of the defendant's demurrer to the complaint forms the only question considered on this appeal.
Smith VanDegraff & Travis, for appellant.
W. C Fitts, Atty. Gen., for the State.
Section 12 of the bill of rights of the constitutions of 1819 and 1861, of this state, provided that "no person shall, for any indictable offense, be proceeded against criminally, by information, except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or the militia when in actual service, or by leave of the court, for oppression of misdemeanor in office." The constitution of 1865, contains this same provision, with the following added thereto: "Provided, that in cases of petit larceny, assault, assault and battery, affray, unlawful assemblies, vagrancy and other misdemeanors, the general assembly may, by law, dispense with a grand jury, and authorize such prosecutions before justices of the peace, or such other inferior courts as may be by law established; and the proceedings in such cases may be regulated by law." The constitutions of 1868, and of 1875, contain the same provisions,-in article 1, § 10 in the one, and article 1, § 9 in the other,-except that the words, "and the proceedings in such cases may be regulated by law," were omitted in the two latter; but this omission did not have the effect to abridge the power of the legislature to regulate such proceedings. It will be observed, that in the constitutions of 1819 and 1861, all indictable offenses without exception, ("except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or the militia when in actual service, or by leave of the court, for oppression or misdemeanor in office") were required to be proceeded against by indictment of a grand jury; and not until after the adoption of the constitution of 1865, containing the added proviso as to certain misdemeanors,-that they might be proceeded against without indictment,-was there ever in this state a prosecution for misdemeanors before justices of the peace and county courts, to finally try and dispose of them. Until the adoption of the Penal Code of 1866, we had no county courts. They were first established by section 482 of that Code. And until its adoption, justices of the peace were confined in their criminal jurisdiction, to preliminary examinations with the view of binding criminals over to the circuit court or discharging them, if there was no probable cause for charging them with the offenses preferred against them. Sale v. State, 68 Ala. 530. But, the Penal Code of 1866 contained that system of penal statutes, carried into our later codes, and first...
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City of Dothan v. Holloway
...in these inferior courts shall be in the name of the state, or conclude, 'against the peace and dignity of the state.'--Thomas v. State, 107 Ala. 61, 17 South. 941; Simpson v. State, 111 Ala. 6, 20 South. "It thus appears that this vexed question of one act or transaction constituting two o......
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Kennedy v. State
...barrier to a case thereof being tried without an indictment, nor of such a trial ab initio in the circuit court. See Thomas v. State, 107 Ala. 61, 17 So. 941; Witt v. State, 130 Ala. 129, 30 So. 473; Collins v. State, 218 Ala. 250, 118 So. 265 (Brown, J., dissenting); Ex parte Flowers, 218 ......
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Collins v. State
...the power of the Legislature. The present Constitution, different in this respect from the Constitutions prior to that of 1865 ( Thomas v. State, 107 Ala. 61 ), misdemeanors from its prohibition against proceeding criminally by information for indictable offenses, by providing that in cases......
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Young v. City of Hokes Bluff
...for a trial de novo in circuit court, and 2) why a prosecuting attorney's complaint was originally required. 1) In Thomas v. State, 107 Ala. 61, 17 So. 941 (1895), the Alabama Supreme Court outlined the history of criminal jurisdiction in the inferior and superior trial courts. Prior to 186......