Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/915

 900 FEDERAL REPORTER. �It is possible for a person to commit two similar crimes on the same day, and to be indicted and punished therefor, and two crimes are committed when two different stills are used at different times on the same day on premises where aie is manufactured, and it is not to be denied that two such crimes may be charged in one indictment, in different counts, nor that in such case each separate count of the indictment, in judgment of law, charges a separate and distinct offence. Each count in an indictment is, in faot and theory, a separate indictment. Different counts are allowable only on the presumption that they are different offences, and every count so imports on the face of the record. Heard, Crim. PL 235, 236. See, also, Eev. St. § 1024; �Accordingly, this record shows the prisoner charged in two sepa- rate counts with having used two different stills at different times on the day and at the place described; and there is no room to contend that, because the jury convicted the prisoner on one count and acquit- ted him as to the other, they found him guilty and likewise notguilty of the same offence. �It has been said — by way of argument, we suppose, for the record discloses no such thing — that, at the trial, evidence as to only one offence was given. If such be the fact, we fail to see how the con- clusion follows that the prisoner was improperly adjudged to have been convicted of one offence. The evidence having proved the use by the prisoner of one still, and no more, on the day and at the place described, what was there for the jury to do but to render the ver- dict they did, namely, guilty of using one still, and not guilty of using another ? On such an indictment, and upon such evidence, the ver- dict must necessarily be guilty on one count, and not guilty on the other. Plainly enough, therefore, the verdict in this case amounts to a conviction on the first count of the indictment, and no error was committed when it was so held at the time of passing sentence. �In addition to the point already eonsidered we find upon the brief a second point not pressed at the argument that the first count of the indictment charges no offence because it omits to aver knowledge. It appears, from what has already been said in regard to the first point, that an objection like this cannot be eonsidered upon the present application. But the point, if open for consideration, could not pre- vail, for the reason that knowledge is not made by the statute to be an ingredient in the offence. When a statute prohibits generally and is silent as to intention, it is clear that the pleader need not aver knowl- edge. U. S. V. Smith, 2 Mason, 143, 1,50; 1 Stark. Crim. PI, 182. ��� �