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239 Neb. 853

479 N.W.2d 125

State v. King

Nebraska Supreme Court

Decided January 24, 1992

Nebraska Supreme Court · decided 1992-01-24

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Usually, when a defendant appeals a conviction and sentence under a municipal ordinance, claiming insufficiency of the evidence and excessiveness of the sentence, an appellate court’s consideration of the assignments of error requires examination of the specific ordinance involved, and an appellate court will not take judicial notice of an ordinance not in the record but assumes that a valid ordi nance creating the offense charged exists, that the evidence sustains the findings of the trial court, and that the sentence is within the limits set by the ordinance.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 8 Neb. Ct. App. 343 - State v. Frederick C.

“[A]n analysis of assignments of error claiming that the evidence is insufficient to support a conviction under a municipal ordinance and that the sentence is excessive requires an examination of the specific ordinance involved. It is well established that an appellate court will not take judicial notice of an ordinance not in the record but assumes that a valid ordinance creating the offense charged exists, that the evidence sustains the findings of the trial court, and that the sentence is within the limits set by the ordinance.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 5 Neb. Ct. App. 629 - State v. Fiedler

Relies on State v. Cottingham · State v. Topping

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1992-01-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently May 2022

16 state decisions

1201992200020102020decided

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 →

Fahrnbruch, J.

¶1 Following a county court bench trial, John W. King was convicted of purposely or knowingly tampering with or damaging the property of another. The property damaged was a truck. King was given a 75-day jail sentence.

¶2 Upon King’s appeal to the district court for Douglas County, his conviction and sentence were affirmed. The defendant then appealed to this court. Here, King has assigned as error that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his conviction and that the sentence imposed is excessive. We affirm.

¶3 King was convicted of violating a municipal ordinance of the *854 city of Omaha. The penalty was also set out by ordinance. When a defendant appeals a conviction and sentence under a municipal ordinance, claiming that the evidence is insufficient for a conviction and that a sentence is excessive, an appellate court’s consideration of the assignments of error requires an examination of the specific ordinance involved. See State v. Topping, 237 Neb. 130, 464 N.W.2d 799 (1991). The record before us does not include the ordinance under which King was convicted or the ordinance under which he was sentenced.

¶4 When an ordinance charging an offense is not properly made a part of the record, an appellate court presumes the existence of a valid ordinance creating the offense charged, and an appellate court will not otherwise take judicial notice of the ordinance. See State v. Topping, supra. In the absence from the record of the applicable municipal ordinance, an appellate court presumes that the evidence sustains the findings of the trial court and that a sentence is within the limits set out in the applicable ordinance. See State v. Cottingham, 226 Neb. 270, 410 N.W.2d 498 (1987).

¶5 Because there is no municipal ordinance in the record in King’s appeal, the order of the district court, affirming the judgment of the county court, is affirmed.

¶6 Affirmed.

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