Murderous Assault Which Followed a Modest Gamble 3 on the Mud member of a gang charged) with attempted murder was sen-fenced" by, Mr. Hamilton and Magistrate Loh at the Mixed Court fon Tuesday to nine months' imprisernment.
Det-Sub-Inspr. Yorke stated that the complainant way among three others who were playing mah-Jonge together on the shore Hongkew Creek. The missing ung, who the police believed was the principal of the gang, was Known in the neighbourhood a Tooligan. On this occasion he came along and tried to extort squeeze, but failed. Complainant, a rather trong man, during the' course of the argument, threatened to give Tung a hiding, which, wHen the talk got rough, he did in " thorough manner. The whipped culprit then went out and got his gang together and began his search for complainant, who a ship's painter. Tung some time later found him in a ten shop, washing his hands.
invited thun to come outside] tinued, There was nobody in the room save the doctor and prosecutrix. Vile end abusive language was not actually the" one. objectionable word which "wns charged by prosecutrix and denied by defendant, and no other offence was proved before the lower Court. Supposing! defendant had use the word, it was certainly highly immoral' and Jo, but was not a crime, discharged, The Dit ict Attorney (Br. L. Husar), in reply, said he was in clined to agree with Mr. Rodger that if the word in question had been used, certainly no crime had] been committed.
Major C. P. Holcomb (who had prosecuted in the case) urged the Court to take very serious consideration of the fact that the Alaskan Code had not been repealed. Tt was and had been, in fact, of very great assistance to the Court in criminal prosecutions and in civil Until it could be shown by statutes of the Alaskan are that the one specifying the particular offence had been repealed the Court should still con. sider it an offence.
The Word "Obscene"
The Judge said that it seemed! to him, whatever the evidence might] have bees, the decision of the lower Court was, "I find defendant guilty] of using vile and obscene language in the presence of a woman." The word obscene in United States Courts did not_ necessarily' mean vile language. He remembered that] in one Court it was stated that} obscene language had three mean ings. Language that the said was obscene was calculated to arouse lewd, libidinous thoughts." In one well-known case there was abuse of the most violent} description he had ever seen, but, it was held not to be calculated to be obscene, The language held by, the Commissioner to be vile in his Judgment did not appear in the statute. is Honour could not help thinking that the Court was not justified in going back to the old law passed in 1901, that had been out-of-date Tt was not in operation in any other place, or in fact in any place on the face of the earth unless out here, They had gone back 20 years to search out from that reservoir of -laws this statute and applied it in China when they had_a live code to which Congress was paying attention every year and which Congress apparently! thought was sufficient to take care of the every-day affairs of the people of the District of Columbia. They might have had a cause for such 4 law in Alaska, but apparently no cause in the District of Columbia, The judgment of the Court below would be reversed and defendant discharged.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.