Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

45 Md. 49

Smith v. State

Court of Appeals of Maryland

Decided June 15, 1876

Court of Appeals of Maryland · decided 1876-06-15

At October Term, 1815, of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, James Smith was tried under the Act of 1861, ch. 390, sec. 55, for having sold wine in the City of Annapolis, to a midshipman, under the age of twenty-one years, attached to the United States’ Uaval Academy, and found guilty. At the trial an exception was taken by the traverser to the refusal of the Court to permit a question to be answered by a witness.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1876-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1980

7 state decisions

30187618801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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 →

Stewart, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court.

¶2It appears, that since the trial of this case in the Circuit Court, and pending this appeal, the Act of 1816, ch. 213, has been passed, superseding the Act of 1861, ch. 390, under which the prosecution was instituted; the conviction of the appellant must therefore fail.

¶3Whether considered as an amending or repealing statute, sec. 55 of the Code of Public Local Laws pf Anne Arundel County, as it stood at the time of the prosecution, has been abrogated or modified, in important particulars. There is no law, now in existence, which would enable the Court to pronounce judgment upon the verdict

¶4Pending cases are not excepted, or reserved, in the repealing law of the late session.

¶5The repeal of a law imposing a penalty, is, of itself, a remission of the penalty, where there is no reservation.

¶6A party cannot he adjudged guilty after the law, under which he may have been prosecuted and convicted, has been repealed, although the offence may have been committed before the repeal.

*51(Decided 15th June, 1876.)

¶7The decision of the Court must he in accordance with the law as it stands at the time of the final judgment. Keller vs. State, 12 Md., 322.

¶8It follows, that the indictment and proceeding in this case must he quashed, and it is unnecessary to decide upon the point made and noted in the hill of exceptions.

¶9Indictment quashed.

/45/md/49 · .json · Public domain