Ex Parte Hayden

THE COURT.

The petitioner was arrested upon a complaint charging him with the crime of vagrancy, in that, being known to be a confidence operator by his own confession and having no visible or lawful means of support, he was found willfully and unlawfully loitering about and around a broker’s office. He entered a plea of guilty and was accordingly sentenced to imprisonment, from which by this writ he seeks relief. The affidavit of complaint charges the offense in the language of the statute. (Pen. Code, sec. 647.)

It is claimed upon the part of petitioner that being a confidence operator is not made an offense under our Penal Code, and, therefore, a confession in relation thereto cannot be made an offense. The term “confidence operator” has a settled and fixed meaning in our language, and implies that the one to whom it applies is one engaged in swindling operations in which advantage is taken of confidence reposed by the victim in the swindler. That such persons are a menace to the safety of the public must be unquestioned, and that the police power is broad enough to warrant legislation looking toward their suppression should be conceded. It is certainly within the legislative power to provide that one having no visible means of support and who admits that he is a swindler and is found lounging about places of public assemblage thereby becomes a vagrant. We see nothing in the enactment of the section of the Penal Code referred to in any wise abridging privileges or immunities of citizens, nor doing or seeking to do aught than to protect well-disposed and orderly citizens from the depredations of the idle and vicious.

It is further insisted that the statute makes the confession the offense and not the act of the party, and that the record discloses a judgment pronounced without proof of the

corpus delicti

otherwise than by the confession of the accused. We do not interpret the section in the manner above stated. It undertakes to and does define vagrancy and the various acts

[147]

or omissions forming its constituent elements. It is the confidence operator against whom the subdivision of the section is directed. The term ‘ ‘ confession ’ ’ is restricted to acknowledgment of guilt, and is not the equivalent of “statement” or “declaration.”