Opinion
No. 3237.
Decided April 1, 1941.
Where a criminal statute is directed at acts without reference to habitual conduct, repeated violations constitute distinct offenses.
An indictment for a statutory offense is not to be tested by the common-law limitations of a similar offense where no intention to observe the common-law rule is to be ascribed to the legislature.
INDICTMENT, under P. L., c. 386, s. 9. A motion to quash was denied subject to the defendant's exception. As grounds of the motion, it avers that the defendant had been indicted for the same offense committed with the same person at another time, that the indictment is indefinite, and that it does not set forth an offense under the statute. A bill of exceptions was allowed by Lorimer, J.
J. Vincent Broderick, County Solicitor, for the State.
Nicholas J. Costakis, by brief, for the defendant.
I. One indictment alleged an offense committed about six months before a like offense charged in the other indictment. The offenses were separate although committed with the same person, and are not to be regarded as a single act extending during the period between them. The statute is directed at acts without reference to habitual conduct. Repeated violations constitute distinct offenses.
II. The allegations of the indictment are sufficiently definite and bring it within the statute. The common-law limitation of application of the offense is one of degree rather than character, and of special rather than generic differentiation. No intention to observe the narrow common-law rule is to be ascribed to the legislature. The fact that the offense at common law was a felony and hence punishable by death meets any presumption that the statute is to be tested by that law.
By the better, if not great weight of, authority similar statutes are construed to be more comprehensive than the common law in the scope of the conduct prohibited. Glover v. State, 179 Ind. 459; State v. Vicknair, 52 La. Ann. 1921; State v. Maida, 29 Del. 40; Honselman v. People, 168 Ill. 172; State v. Wedemeyer, 65 Ore. 198; Herring v. State, 119 Ga. 709; People v. Hodgkin, 94 Mich. 27.
Exception overruled.