Shanghai, March 25. Before Hon. C. 8, Lontxorsr, Judge.
United States of America v. James Francis Leddy.
Judgement was delivered in the case of James Francis Leddy who UN
893 on March 17 pleaded guilty to charge that he on a day or days, between February 25, 1916, and March 1, 1918, at Shanghai, in the Republic of China, and within the jurisdiction of said Court, did feloniously take and carry away from on board the steamship Seward certain personal property of the value of more than thirty-five dollars.
The learned Judge based his judgement on the principle that drunkenness constitutes no legal excuse for crime, though it may ba considered in fixing the penalty. Ho said:
By two acts of Congress* the penalty for this offence is fixed at not less than one and not more than ten years. The accused offers evidence that he had pre viously led a respectable life and it is urged in his behalf that the offence was committed while under the influence of liquor. In the Anglo-American law, however, this constitutes no excuse for crime. As stated by 8 writer of autho-
"'It is true that the sanctions of the law cannot be supposed to exert an equal influence on the mind and conduct of a person in this state: but the initiation of the crime may be said to date back to the time when the offender took steps to deprive himself of his reason. It is evident that if drunkenness were allowed to excuse, the gravest crime might be committed with impunity by those who either counterfeited the state or actually assumed it."
In fixing the penalty, however, it is permissible to consider intoxication as an extenuating circumstances and this we are disposed to apply in the case at Bar by impos ing the minimum of the term of imprisonment prescribed by the statute. Counsel has further asked that sentence be suspended for the Present in order to allow the aoccused to find employment within the jurisdiction of the Court. On March 21 opportunity was given for the acoused to seek such employment and a reasonable time allowed for obtaining it, but it appears that none has been obtained and that there is no_ likelihood that any will be. Whether in case such an arrangement could have been made it should have operated as to relieve defendant of punishment we need not now determine, but we are of the opinion that it will be better for the accused to serve his sentence as soon as possible and reap the benefit of whatever deterrent effects it may have. We shall allow him credit for the time actually served in confinement since his arrest, but that is as much as we feel justified in doing.
It is accordingly considered and adjudged that the accused be, and he hereby jis, sentenced to one ginal fron
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.