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191 Mich. 357

People v. Gansley

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided June 1, 1916

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1916-06-01

<p>Elections — Criminal Law — Purity oe Liquor Election — Local Option — Corporations—Donations.</p> <p>Act No. 109, Pub. Acts 1913 (1 Comp. Laws 1915, § 3841), provides that no sums of money shall be paid and no expense authorized or incurred by or on behalf of any candidate who has received a nomination to any office or position in excess of a stated amount; section 1 of the statute limits the money to be paid or expense incurred by or on behalf of any candidate to be paid by him in order to secure or aid in securing his nomination to office and that no sum of money shall be paid and no expense authorized by or on behalf of any candidate contrary to the provisions of the statute. Section 11 forbids any person not a candidate or treasurer of a political committee to. pay, give, lend or agree to pay, give or lend any money for election expense, unless given to a candidate or to a political committee. Section 14 provides that no officer, director, stockholder, attorney, agent or any other person acting for any corporation under the laws of this or of any other State, or foreign country, except corporations formed for political purposes shall pay money of the corporation to any candidate or political committee for the payment of any election expenses whatsoever. Held, that the statute applies to elections other than those at which candidates only are to be chosen, and applies to the payment of money by the director of a brewing company to a so-called “Personal Liberty League,” in a local-option campaign. Kuhn, Ostrander, Bird, and Brooke, JJ., dissenting.</p>

Relies on People v. Gadway · People v. Rice · Robinson v. Harmon

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1916-06-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently September 1986

2 state decisions

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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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Brooke, J.

¶1(dissenting). In approaching the discussion in this case, my Brother Stone treats the statute as remedial in character, whereas it is in fact highly penal. Section 18 of the act provides that upon conviction for a violation of any of its provisions the person so convicted may be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000, or by imprisonment for not more than two years, either or both, at the discretion of the court. We have held in a great number of - cases that penal statutes must be strictly construed; in other words, that the liberty or property of the citizen shall not be taken from him, except for the violation of a statute so plain in its provisions that “he who runs may read” — so plain that no citizen charged with its violation may with reason say, “True, I committed the *378act with the commission of which I am charged, but the legislature by the enactment in question did not intend to include me within its provisions.” Among the many cases where penal statutes have been strictly construed by this court are the following: Van Buren v. Wylie, 56 Mich. 501 (23 N. W. 195); People v. Gadway, 61 Mich. 285 (28 N. W. 101, 1 Am. St. Rep. 578) ; Crosby v. Railroad Co., 131 Mich. 288 (91 N. W. 124) ; Van Camp v. Railroad Co., 137 Mich. 467, 470 (100 N. W. 771) ; Robinson v. Harmon, 157 Mich. 272 (117 N. W. 664); Deloria v. Atkins, 158 Mich. 232 (122 N. W. 559); People v. Rice, 161 Mich. 657 (126 N. W. 981); Young v. Moore, 162 Mich. 60 (127 N. W. 29) ; People v. Blair, 183 Mich. 130 (149 N. W. 1039). See, also, 26 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law (2d Ed.), p. 658.

¶2I have read the title and the entire act under consideration with great care, and I am convinced that it was not the legislative intent to include local-option elections within its provisions. If this is the impression created in my mind by a perusal of the title and the act, it seems entirely reasonable to believe that respondent may have honestly acted under a similar impression. No citizen should be. subjected to fine and imprisonment for the violation of a statute, the1 construction of which is open to so serious doubt as to its application as the one under consideration.

¶3The judgment should be reversed, and the respondent discharged.

Kuhn, Ostrander, and Bird, JJ., concurred with Brooke, J.
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