People v. Johnson

JAMES, J.

Defendant was prosecuted for the offense defined in section 182 of the Penal Code. The indictment contained two counts, in the first of which it was charged that defendant with two other persons conspired to falsely accuse one A. C. Loveland before the recorder of the city of Imperial with having issued a check on the First National Bank of Holt-ville without having sufficient funds or credit at that bank to meet the check on presentation. The second count set forth in the preliminary portion thereof that as a part of the same act and transaction alleged in the first count, defendants«conspired to pervert and obstruct justice and the due administration of the laws by falsely charging said Loveland with the crime of drawing and uttering a check knowing that he had not sufficient funds in or credit at the bank upon which the check was drawn, and to procure a warrant of arrest and have said Loveland arrested while he was engaged in hearing the criminal cause in which appellant and others were defendants, thereby discrediting said Loveland as recorder and prejudicing the prosecution in the criminal cause then being tried. It was further charged in the second count that pursuant to that conspiracy the said Loveland was arrested while he was presiding in his court and while he was engaged in hearing a criminal cause in which this defendant and two other alleged conspirators were defendants. The jury returned a verdict finding the defendant guilty under the second count of the indictment and he was thereafter sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dollars, in default of which it was ordered that

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he should be confined in the county jail for a period of six months. A motion for a new trial having been made and denied, this appeal was taken from the order denying the motion and from the judgment.

A demurrer interposed to the indictment raised the point that there were two offenses charged therein, contrary to the provisions of section 954 of the Penal Code. The section last mentioned originally provided that the indictment or information should only charge one offense and the decisions of the supreme court, down to volumne 146 of the California Reports, construe and apply the provision of the Penal Code as it then stood in the form referred to. Section 954, however, was amended in the year 1905, and it has since provided that the indictment or information may charge different offenses, but that they must all relate to the same act, transaction, or event. In this case the indictment neither charged two offenses, nor does it appear that the acts which were described in the first count were different from those described in the second. To do all of the things enumerated in the different subdivisions of section 182 of the Penal Code amounts to a single offense only, and it is quite plain that the district attorney might have joined in one count of his indictment all of the matters which were made the subject of the two counts. That he did choose to separate them and state with more particularity the charge in the way which is exhibited by the indictment did not violate any of the rules of criminal pleading, or any of the specific provisions of section 954 of the Penal Code.