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139 Miss. 513

104 So 354

State v. Hinton

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided June 1, 1925

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1925-06-01

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“In alleging a statutory offense, the language of the statute or its equivalent must be used, ... ( 139 Miss. at 515 , 104 So. at 355 ).”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 284 So. 2d 523 - Grantham v. State

Relies on Richburger v. State · Sullivan v. State · Rawls v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1925-06-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently October 1973

9 state decisions

40192519301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Smith, 0. J.,

¶1 delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2 This is an appeal by the state from a judgment sustaining a demurrer to an indictment. The indictment alleges in the language of chapter 245, Laws of 1924, on which the indictment is predicated, that the appellee “did have in his possession as integral part of a. distillery, commonly called a still,” and the ground of objection thereto is that it does not allege what part of a still the appellee had in his possession.

¶3 In alleging" a statutory offense, the language of the statute or its equivalent must be used, and “where the language is so specific as to give notice of the act made unlawful, and so exclusive as to prevent its application to other acts, it is sufficient to charge the offense by using only the words of the statute.” 2 Miss Digest, 695; Sullivan v. State, 67 Miss. 346, 7 So. 275; Rawls v. State, 70 Miss. 739, 12 So. 584; State v. Bardwell, 72 Miss. 535, 18 So. 377; Richburger v. State, 90 Miss. 806, 44 So. 772.

¶4 The act made unlawful by this statute is the possession of any integral part of a still specific notice of which is set forth in the language thereof, which language excludes guilt from the possession of any article other than an integral part of a still; consequently the indictment is clearly within this rule.

¶5 Reversed and. remanded.

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