State v. Reed

Le Grand, C. J., delivered the opinion of this court. This appeal, we think, is conclusively settled by the second section of the act of 1852, chapter 63. If the prisoner had been found guilty on the trial under the first indictment, the only inquiry would have been, whether judgment could be entered upon the verdict of the jury? If a valid judgment could have been entered, then it was not what is technically known as a mistrial, which would enable the State to proceed anew under another indictment, and this being so, of course any motion in arrest of judgment would have been properly overruled.

The question, then, is: Why was not the finding of the jury such as to authorize the court to award judgment? To this inquiry it is auswered, the indictment was defective in several particulars, first, in its allegation of venue; second, in ²⁷³ its failure to designate the prisoner as a free uegro; third, because it charged “that the said Gfeorge Vansant, him the said Albert. Reed, in the manner and form aforesaid, then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of ¡naiiee aforethought, did kill and murder,” &c.; and fourthly, that the given name of the prisoner was incorrectly set out. Whatever may be the true philology of the averment as to the killing; that is, whether the words impute the crime to Reed or to Vansant, cannot be matter of importance in the posture of the case before this court.

For, were it, conceded that each and every of the objections urged by the State against, the sufficiency of the indictment was well taken, they could not avail,