Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

52 Ala. 377

Ex parte Birchfield

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided June 15, 1875

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1875-06-15

This was an application for a writ of prohibition to the judge of the circuit court of Madison. The facts upon which it was based are fully set forth in the opinion. Section 3630 of Rev. Code fixes the punishment of prostitutes, &c., at not less than ten, nor more than fifty dollars for the first offence. The statute fixing punishment for the offence, it cannot be punished as a common law offence. Rev. Code, § 3754; 1 Arch. Crim. Pleading, marg. p. 2.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently December 1914

3 state decisions

1018751880189019001910decided

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 →

MANNING, J.

¶1The petitioner was indicted and found guilty of keeping a house of ill-fame, or bawdy-house, for which the jury assessed against her a fine of two hundred dollars ; and this and the costs of the prosecution not being paid, the court sentenced her to hard labor for over four hundred days.

¶2In doing this, it is insisted that the court exceeded its jurisdiction ; that the penalty for this offence is prescribed by section 3630 of the Revised Code, and is much lighter than the penalty imposed on her; and application is thereupon made for a writ of prohibition to the judge of the court in which she was tried, to prevent the execution of the sentence against her.

¶3The prosecution was for an offence punishable by the common law, and was indictable under section 3754 of the Revised Code, unless the punishment therefor is “ particularly specified ” in the Code. The only section in which this is supposed to be done is § 3630, headed “ vagrancy.”

¶4In this it is enacted, that a person who is a common prostitute, or the keeper of a house of prostitution, and has no honest employment whereby to maintain herself, must, on conviction, for the first offence be fined not less than ten, nor more than fifty dollars. This evidently does not prohibit a prosecution for the common law offence of keeping a bawdy-house, or house of prostitution. If it did, then a person who was in good circumstances, and had money to lend, and was engaged in some “ honest employment ” whereby he or she could be maintained, and was, therefore, the more clearly inexcusable for being con*379cerned in such an evil business, might keep a house of ill-fame with impunity. We cannot give to this provision of the Code, an interpretation that would lead to such a conclusion.

¶5Under section 3754 of the Revised Code, a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars may be imposed upon one convicted of the offence with which the indictment charges this petitioner; and if the fine and costs be not paid, imprisonment may be substituted by the court, according to section 3760 of the Revised Code. .

¶6The application for a writ of prohibition is denied.

/52/ala/377 · .json · Public domain