Conservatism in Legal Procedure omission the indictment was held bad, as not "indicating the power or author ity against which the facts charged in the body of the indictment constitute an offense." And yet the indictment showed upon its face that it was re turned in the Criminal Court of Greene County, Missouri, by .the "grand jurors of the State of Missouri, impaneled, sworn and charged to inquire within and for the body of Greene County," and it charged the crime to have been committed in the County of Greene and State of Missouri, contrary to the form of the statute in such cases made and provided, and it was signed by the Prose cuting Attorney, endorsed by the fore man of the grand jury, and filed by the clerk of the court. The court cited adjudicated cases and text writers in support of its opinion, but the lay mind, which is presumed to know the law, will inquire if the state of Missouri was not plainly indicated as the power and authority against which the offense was committed, what power and authority was indicated? In these cases what was intended was perfectly plain from the indictment. In the first case the language used was better fitted for its purpose than the formal phrase; where the adjective was employed instead of the adverb the fault could not have been detected by one who did not know what was meant, and in the last case the omission of the article "the" was plainly an omission of the pen of no more significance than if there had been a failure to cross a "t" or dot an "i." In the neighboring state of Texas there is a list of cases displaying a like precision with respect to verdicts. In Taylor v. State, 5 Texas App. 569, decided in 1879, the jury found the defendant "guity" and fixed his pun ishment at imprisonment in the peniten
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tiary for three years. The court said that as a general rule "neither bad spelling or ungrammatical findings of a jury will vitiate a verdict when the sense is clear." And after declaring this common sense rule they hold the verdict bad because "guity" is neither syno nymous nor idem sonans with "guilty." In Curry v. State, 7 Texas App. 91, also decided in 1879, the jury found the defendant "guily" as charged in the indictment and assessed his punishment at five years' imprisonment, and this verdict was held to be good because fol lowed by the words "as charged in the indictment," and also because "by sepa rating the syllables so as to place the first four letters in one syllable and hav ing the 'y' alone in the second, and giving the letter 'i' the short sound, the sound would be, if not identical, at any rate nearly so, with the ordinary pronunciation of the word if written 'guilty.'" Now, it is plain as a pike-staff that in each case the jury meant "guilty," and in neither case if the word as written is to be dealt with as a distinct word is it either synonymous or idem sonans with guilty. Neither "guity" nor "guily" is known to the English lan guage, and the omission of the "t" affects the identity of the sound quite as much as does the omission of the "1." In Woolridge v. State, 13 Texas App. 443, decided in 1883, the verdict was, "We the jury find the defendant, Ben Woolridge, guilty of murder in fist de gree and assess the punishment at death." The learned court said: "Instead of the word 'first' the jury has used the word 'fist,' or, in spelling the word 'first' has omitted the letter 'r.' " Con sidering all the circumstances, the de fendant being on trial for murder, and
