People v. Hurley

HAYNES, C.

—The defendant was indicted by the grand jury of Tapa county for offering to accept a bribe, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment in the state’s prison for the term of one year, and appeals from the judgment and an order denying a new trial.

The defendant demurred to the indictment, and his demurrer was overruled. After conviction and before sentence he moved in arrest of judgment, and, that motion having been denied, he moved for a new trial, and that motion was also denied.

The defendant was indicted under section 57 of the Penal Code, which is as follows: “Every person who gives or offers a bribe to any officer or member of any legislative caucus, political convention, committee, primary election, or political gathering of any kind, held for the purpose of nominating candidates for offices of honor, trust, or profit, in this state, with intent to influence the person to whom such bribe is given or offered to be more favorable to one candidate than another, and every person, member of either of the bodies in this section mentioned, who receives or offers to receive any such bribe, is pun

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ishable by imprisonment in the state’s prison not less than one nor more than fourteen years.”

The indictment charged, in substance, that at a primary election held in the Veterans’ Home precinct on September 14, 1898, the defendant was elected a delegate to the regular Kepublican county convention, to be held on September 22d, for the purpose of nominating candidates for the various county offices of said county, among which was the office of superintendent of schools; that John A. Imrie was a candidate for the nomination to said office by said convention; that on the twenty-first day of September, 1898, the defendant, as such delegate and member of such convention, did unlawfully and feloniously offer to receive from said John A. Imrie, as such candidate for said office, a bribe of ten dollars, with the willful, unlawful, and felonious intent that it should influence him, said Hurley, to be more favorable as such delegate to said Imrie, as such candidate, than to any other person seeking said nomination.

Appellant contends “that, before he could have been guilty of any crime, Imrie, the candidate, must have offered appellant a bribe, and appellant must have received, or offered to receive, such bribe.”