NOTES OF RECENT CASES OF IMPORTANCE FROM THE NATIONAL REPORTER SYSTEM (Copies of the pamphlet Reporters containing full reports of any of these decisions may be secured from the West Pub lishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, at 25 cents each. In ordering, the title of the desired case should be given as well tit the citation of volume and page of the Reporter in which it is pnnted.)
ACCESSORY TO SUICIDE. (PUNISHMENT — IMPOSSIBILITY OF PUNISHING PRINCIPAL.) KENTUCKY COURT OF APPEALS. The unreported nisi frius case, in which a Hibernian judge informed a person convicted of having attempted suicide that a much heavier punishment would have been imposed by the court if the attempt had been successful, is almost par alleled by the Kentucky case of Commonwealth v. Hicks, 82 Southwestern Reporter 265, in which Hicks was tried as accessory before the fact to the crime of suicide. Some of the testimony in this case is quite interesting, though perhaps a trifle less instructive than the legal principles involved. For instance: Tom Sears testified that he was standing on the corner by Hunt's drug store, when Hicks came along and smiled and said: " I have got to go to the drug store and get Chris Haggard a quarter's worth of morphine. I reckon he's going to kill himself." A sister of the de ceased testified that on Wednesday, preceding the death of the deceased, the accused offered to bet her that Chris Haggard would not live until Sat urday night. The druggist testified that he sold the accused half a dram of morphine and that ac cused said he was purchasing it for a young man by the name of Haggard. Another sister of de ceased testified that on Wednesday night before deceased died, Hicks asked him what night he had set for him (Hicks) to come back, and deceased told him Friday night, whereupon accused said: "Put it off. I can't come;" and Haggard said: "1 will put off killing myself until Saturday night and you all can come to my burying Sunday." At the time of this conversation the witness said her brother Chris was playing the guitar and "seemed like he was just as lively as he could be." The court finds little difficulty in reaching the con clusion that suicide is a felony, reciting Blackstone' s well-known statement that a felonious homicide may be committed either by killing oneself, or another person, and Bishop's conclu sion that the same principle which forbids one to take the life of another prohibits equally the tak ing of his own life, so that self-murder or suicide, like any other murder, is a common law felony. Clark on Criminal Law and Commonwealth v. Bowen, 13 Mass. 356, are cited in support of the rule that inasmuch as suicide is a felony at com mon law, one who counsels another to commit
suicide and is present when the act is committed is guilty of murder as a principal in the second degree. The most serious question in the case, however, arises under the Kentucky statute, which provides that in all felonies the accessories before the fact shall be liable to the same punish ment as the principal and may be prosecuted jointly with the principal, or severally. This statute furnishes foundation for an argument that, as the principal in the crime was dead and could not be punished, the terms of the statute making the accessory liable to the same punishment as might be inflicted on the principal could not be applied so as to authorize the infliction of any punishment on the accused. The court, however, holds that as suicide at the common law is murder, and as the statute fixes the punishment of willful murder at death or confinement in the peniten tiary for life, the case stands in principle as if one was accessory before the fact for the murder by his principal, of a third person and, after the com mission of the crime the principal should immedi ately kill himself. In this case it would be im possible to punish the principal, but it is not be lieved that under any sound reasoning the acces sory would thereby go free. On the contrary the very object of the statute is to make the punish ment of the accessory entirely independent of the conviction or punishment of the principal. It is therefore concluded that under the law of Ken tucky an accessory before the fact in the case of suicide is subject to punishment for the crime of willful murder. CONSPIRACY. ICE.)
(UNFAIR COMPETITION — MAL
KENTUCKY COURT OF APPEALS. An insight into the methods pursued by the Standard Oil Monopoly in smothering competition is given in the case of Standard Oil Co. v. Doyle, 82 Southwestern Reporter 271. It appears from the statement of facts that Doyle for many years had been the agent of the Standard Oil Company, but left its employ and started in business for him self. He received oil from Cincinnati from an other company in carload lots, and did a thriving business for several months. Very soon a special agent of the Standard Oil Company arrived at Lexington to look after the interests of that com pany. It seems that he went to one of the other
