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14 Ind. 380

State v. Ellison

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided June 7, 1860

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1860-06-07

<p>APPEAL from the Lawrence Court of Common Pleas.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-06-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently May 1934

10 state decisions

3018601870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Worden, J.

¶1Information against the defendant, charging that “ on the first day of December, 1856, at said county, Andrew Ellison did maliciously and mischievously kill and cause to be killed one colt, the property of one Lorenzo Whitted, of the value ©f 35 dollars, contrary,” &c.

¶2The information, on motion of defendant, was quashed, and the state excepted, and appeals to this Court.

¶3We discover no defect in the information, and none has been pointed out, no brief having been filed for the appellee. We are not advised upon what ground the information was quashed, except from the brief of counsel for the state. It is there stated that the information was quashed, because the affidavit on which it was predicated charged the defendant with the commission of the offense, not absolutely, but only as the affiant' verily believed. Such is the character of the affidavit; but that seems to us to be sufficient. Such is the statutory form of an affidavit for proceedings in criminal cases before a justice of the peace. 2 E. S. p. 502. We see no substantial reason for any greater degree of strictness in this respect, in proceedings in the Common Pleas. In Simpkins v. Malatt, 9 Ind. R. 543, the Court held that an affidavit sworn to upon the belief of the party making it, was equivalent to one sworn *381to in absolute and direct terms. The Court say, quoting from Róscoe, “Belief is to be considered an absolute term; hence, to swear that he believes a thing to be true, is equivalent to swearing that it is true.”

A. B. Carlton and R. C. McAfee, for the state.Per Chvriam.

¶4The judgment quashing the information is reversed at the costs of the appellee, and the cause remanded for further proceedings.

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