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110 Ala. 56

Cahn v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1895

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1895-11-15

Tried before the Hon. W. .S. ThokiNGTON. The appellant was indicted, tried' and convicted under the following indictment: “The grand jury of said county charge that before the finding of this indictment, A. Cahn, whose Christian name is to the grand jury unknown, did keep a disorderly, public and ill governed house, and did then and there unlawfully cause and procure certain persons, as well women as men, of evil name and fame, to frequent and come together, in his said…

Relies on Commonwealth v. Cobb · Price v. State · Campbell v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1895-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently January 1940

4 state decisions

10189519001910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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HARALSON, J.

¶1The indictment in this case was good at common law for keeping a disorderly house.—Price v. The State, 96 Ala. 1; Sparks v. State, 59 Ala.86.

¶2To support an indictment of the kind, it is sufficient to prove that the defendant suffered and allowed the place to be the habitual resort of drunkards, prostitutes and such people as are mentioned in the indictment, creating the disturbance and disorder therein alleged.

¶3A person who rents a house knowing the purposes for which it is to be used, and which is kept as a disorderly house with his knowledge, may be proceeded against and punished as the keeper of it, (5 Amer. & Eng. Encyc. of *60Law and notes, p. 699) ; and the eyil repute of those renting and the visitors is admissible to show guilty knowledge.—Price’s Case, supra; Com. v. Cobb, 120 Mass. 356; 10 Cr. L. Mag. 520.

¶4The objections to the evidence introduced by the State were general, and for these reasons, if not for better ones, were properly overruled, The evidence seems to have been legal, for the purpose of showing the character of the house.—Com. v. Kimball, 7 Gray, 328; Sparks’ Case, supra.

¶5. The charge requested by defendant was properly refused. It was calculated to confuse and mislead. The two apartments of the house may have been separate, to the extent of not entering the one from the other without going out of doors and not under shelter, and may have passed out of control of defendant into the custody and control of other persons, for all proper purposes, and the disorderly conduct may have occurred only in the portions of the premises so rented out, and yet defendant, if he knowingly permitted such disorder to go on as charged, might be guilty notwithstanding. A renter cannot shield himself behind such excuses, if he had knowledge of the illegal and disorderly purposes for which it was used.—Authorities supra; Campbell v. The State, 55 Ala. 93.

¶6Affirmed.

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