[A]THE CRIMINAL CODE OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Reading edition
[A]THE CRIMINAL CODE OF PENNSYLVANIA.
William E. Mikell, Member of State Commission to Revise the Criminal Code.
Perhaps, in the true sense of the term, there is no criminal “code” in Pennsylvania. The whole body of the criminal law has never been reduced to a written code in this state in the sense in which this has been done in some of the States of the Union in which jurisdictions there are no crimes except those specifically prescribed. * * *
At the common law, crimes were classified as felonies and misdemeanors. Without going into nice historical questions we can fairly say that the term “felony” was applied to the more heinous crimes, “misdemeanors” to the more venial ones. In the statutory law of both England and of this country these terms have in general been similarly employed. In the Pennsylvania code the legislature has in the majority of cases in defining each crime designated the crime a felony or a misdemeanor; and following the general principle of the common law, affixed the stigma of “felony” to the graver crimes. Viewing the code, however, as a whole, there is an utter lack of principle in the grading of crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, either according to the moral heinousness of the offense, or the severity of the punishment.
Bigamy, with its attendant disgrace and illegitimacy, is a misdemeanor, while embezzlement by a servant is a felony. For a clerk or agent to embezzle—by the code called larceny—is a felony; for a banker, trustee or guardian to embezzle, is only a misdemeanor. * * *
Administering a narcotic with intent to commit larceny, is felony; assault and battery endangering the life of an infant, is a misdemeanor. Blackmailing is only a misdemeanor, while receiving stolen goods is a felony. If one in the heat of a fight, intending to disable or maim his antagonist, should cut him ever so slightly, he is guilty of a felony, but, if he “on purpose, and of malice aforethought by lying in wait, shall unlawfully cut out the tongue, put out an eye, cut off the nose * * * or cut off any limb” of his victim, he commits only a misdemeanor. Also if he “voluntarily, maliciously and of purpose bite off the * * * limb or member of another,” he is guilty of a misdemeanor. Truly, there must have been giants in those days. The effect of these two sections is to make it a graver offense to attempt mayhem and fail, than to succeed.
The Grading of Penalties.
The work of the commissioners who framed the Code of 1860 shows an utter lack of any consistent theory not only of grading the crimes as felonies and misdemeanors, but also in grading the punishment fixed for the various crimes. It may not be easy to do this in all cases. Persons may intelligently differ as to whether perjury should be more seriously punished than assault and battery, and whether larceny or bigamy be deserving of the greater penalty. But it is difficult to see why embezzlement by a consignee or factor should be punished with five years’ imprisonment and embezzlement by a person transporting the goods to the factor should be punished by one year’s imprisonment. * * *
Under the Act of 1860, having in possession tools for the counterfeiting of copper coin is punished by six years’ imprisonment, while by the next section the punishment for actually making counterfeit copper coin is only three years, though it cannot be made without the tools to make it. * * *
The distinction just mentioned is, however, no stranger than that made by the code between a councilman on the one hand and a judge on the other, in the provisions against bribery. Section 48 of the Act of 1860 provides that if any judge * * * shall accept a bribe, he shall be fined not more than $1000 and be imprisoned for not more than five years. But by Section 8 of the Act of 1874, a councilman who accepts a bribe may be fined $10,000, ten times as much as a judge, and be imprisoned the same number of years—five years. The statute also provides that the councilman shall be incapable of holding any place of profit or trust in this Commonwealth thereafter. But the convicted judge is placed under no such disability.
Relations of Fine to Imprisonment.
In the case of almost every crime denounced by the code fine and imprisonment are associated. In most cases the penalty provided is fine and imprisonment, in some it is fine or imprisonment. In a few cases imprisonment alone without a fine is prescribed, and in a few others it is a fine alone without imprisonment. We seek in vain for any principle on which the fine is omitted, where it is omitted; or for a principle on which it is inflicted in addition to imprisonment in some cases, and as an alternative to imprisonment in others. Thus the penalty for exhibiting indecent pictures on a wall in a public place is a fine of $300, but no imprisonment, while by the same act the drawing of such pictures on the same wall carries a fine of $500 and one year’s imprisonment. Manslaughter carries a fine of $1000 as well as imprisonment for twelve years, but train robbery and murder in the second degree involve no fine, but fifteen and twenty years in prison respectively. It cannot be the length of the imprisonment that does away with the fine in this latter case, for the crime of aiding in kidnapping may be punished with twenty-five years in prison, but also has a fine of $5000.
More striking still, perhaps, is the lack of any relation between the amount of the fine and the length of the imprisonment provided in the code. In the case of some crimes the fine is small and the imprisonment short, as in blasphemy, which is punished by a fine of $100 and three months in prison, extortion and embracery punished with $500 and one year. In a few the fine is large and the imprisonment long, as in accepting bribes by councilmen, $10,000 and five years, and malicious injury to railroads, $10,000 and ten years. But in others the fine is small while the imprisonment is long and in others the fine large and the imprisonment short.
Incomplete Crimes.
It is a general principle of criminal jurisprudence that “incomplete crimes,” as they are called, such as attempt, and conspiracy to commit a crime, should not be punished as severely as the full, completed crime. It was on this principle that at common law an attempt to commit even the gravest felony, such as murder, was only a misdemeanor. Other codes maintain this principle. * * *
The Pennsylvania code has no general section on attempts, but in a haphazard manner, in providing for some crimes, provides for the attempt to commit the same, and in some cases has no provision for such attempts. A study of those cases in which provision for punishing the attempt is made, shows an entire absence of any theory or principle in assessing the punishment. Thus the penalty for the attempt to commit arson is the same as for the crime of arson itself; for the attempt to commit robbery, the same as for the completed robbery; but the attempt to commit murder is not punished with the same penalty as murder, viz.: death, or twenty years’ imprisonment, but by seven years’ imprisonment only.
Instances of Lack of Co-ordination in Drafting.
Two strikers separately determine to wreck a passenger train: one removes a rail from the road over which a train is scheduled to pass; another cuts the telegraph wire to prevent the train dispatcher from stopping the train from running into a wreck. The first striker would come within the terms of Section 7 of the Act of 1911 and could be sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000 and suffer imprisonment for ten years; the second man would come within the terms of Section 147 of the Act of 1860 and could not be fined more than $500 or imprisoned more than twelve months. * * *
If the executor made way with a horse belonging to the estate, his maximum imprisonment would be still two years; but if the butler made way with another horse he might receive ten years as a penalty. If a mule would serve the butler’s purpose as well as a horse he had better take the mule, for then he could not be sentenced for more than three years; if the mule were not swift enough, however, he might choose an automobile, for the maximum imprisonment for stealing an automobile is the same as that for larceny of the mule, being less than one-third of that for larceny of a horse.
If the driver of a public “coachee” by “wanton and furious driving or racing” unintentionally breaks a chicken’s leg he may be punished by five years’ imprisonment, the same punishment provided for attempted rape, for mayhem, for counterfeiting, and for robbery; but if the driver of a taxicab is guilty of the same assault on a member of the feathered tribe he is not even indictable. If the driver of this “coachee,” while so driving, should accidentally inflict the slightest personal injury on another, he would be liable to greater punishment than if he deliberately stabbed that other with intent to maim him, or wilfully and maliciously exploded dynamite under him, thus doing him serious bodily harm. This violates one of the cardinal principles of criminal jurisprudence, viz., that crimes of negligence are not so grave as crimes done with deliberate intent, a principle recognized in other parts of the code in providing for murder and involuntary manslaughter. * * *
The writer has attempted to point out in this paper some of the more glaring and interesting defects in the code. He has by no means exhausted them. There is a great need for a complete revision of the code. It is a jumble of inconsistent theories; a great many sections are badly drawn, others are obsolete; many are inconsistent, many are in conflict; there is much overlapping due to different acts having been passed at different times covering in part the same subject matter, so that it cannot be told whether a given crime should be punished under one section or another prescribing a different punishment.
Governor Brumbaugh has appointed the following on the Commission to revise the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth: Edwin M. Abbott, Chairman, Philadelphia; Wm. E. Mikell, Secretary, Philadelphia; George C. Bradshaw, Pittsburgh; Clarence E. Coughlin, Wilkes-Barre; Rex N. Mitchell, Punxsutawney.