Page:Cole v. State (210 Ark. 433).pdf/4

 Act No. 3, adopted in 1936. The Gurein opinion says that if the defendants believed charges in the information were uncertain, "they had the right to request a bill of particulars to advise them whether they were charged with preventing, or only with attempting to prevent, a person from doing a lawful act." It was held that if objection had been made to the so-called "indefiniteness" prior to trial, the deficiency could have been met "by the simple expedient of striking out the word 'or' appearing in the phrase 'and/or.

In the case at bar we are dealing with an indictment, not an information. Here charges were made by a grand jury, and it confined accusation to acts of the three defendants who "by the use of force and violence" are alleged to have prevented Williams, (and he is the only one mentioned) from engaging in work as a laborer.

One of the first motions by defendants was to quash the indictment "because it is so vague and indefinite that they are not advised of the charges against them".

Treating the Act as constitutional—and it has been so held in two cases—the motion to quash was properly overruled because the indictment alleged that the accused, by use of force and violence, prevented Williams from working

Defendants argue the Act is void because provisions of Sec. 4 are made cumulative of other existing articles of the penal code upon the same subject. Perhaps the answer is that no other article of the code deals with the identical subject and undertakes to cover labor strife (accompanied by violence and threats) as a matter distinct from prior classifications.

Denial of the motion to quash, however, though legally proper—did not authorize introduction of evidence that a crime denounced by the Act (the commission of which was a transaction separate from the use of force or volence) had been committed—for example, that the three defendants, or either of them, had by threats, unaccompanied by force or violence, prevented