Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/109

Rh in, or may come into the situation and circumstances which constitute the reasons for and the basis of the classification, must be entitled to the rights, privileges, immunities and exemptions conferred by the statute or it would be partial and void. If the classification is made under Section 8 of the first article of the constitution, everyone who is in or may come into the situation and circumstances which constitute the reasons for the basis of the classification, must be subjected to the disabilities, duties, obligations and burdens imposed by the statute, or it would be partial and void. It follows that the cases that have been decided upon either of the subsections are of equal value in arriving at the meaning of the expression and requirement that all class legislation must be so framed as to extend to and embrace equally all persons who are in or may come into the like situation and circumstances, constituting the reasons for and basis of the classification. Class legislation which has applied equally to all that are in or that may come into the like situation and circumstances and which makes a reasonable and natural classification, is valid and constitutional."

Therefore, the court is pleased to overrule this ground.

(j) In that the act violates Section 2, Article 2 of the constitution of Tennessee; which reads as follows:

Sec"Sec [sic]. 2. No person or persons belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others, except in the cases herein directed or permitted."

So far as the court can recall there is no insistence by the defendant that this ground should be sustained by the court, and for that reason it is passed and overruled.

Second (a) That the indictment is so vague as not to inform the defendant of the nature and cause of the accusation against him.

And also,

(b) That the statute upon which the indictment is based is void for indefiniteness and lack of certainty.

The questions raised by these sections, have been discussed in another part of this opinion, fully, and the grounds stated upon which the same questions have been overruled. Therefore, these are overruled without further comment.

Third (a) In that the act and the indictment violate Section 1 of the Fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States, which reads as follows:

"Sec. 1, Art. XIV. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

As the court conceives, the defendants raised the same question under this assignment of this ground as they did under Section 8 of Article 1 of the constitution of Tennessee, except, they insist that the act involved in the case at bar, not only violates Section 8 of Article 1 of the constitution of Tennessee, but in like particular violates Article 1 of the Fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States.

In the case of Meyer vs. State of Nebraska, decided by Justice McReynolds, and quoted in 67 Law Ed., United States. Reports on page 390, a case wherein the plaintiff in error was tried and convicted upon an indictment in Hamilton county, Nebraska, under a charge that on May 25, 1920, while an instructor in Zion parochial school, he unlawfully taught the subject of reading in the German language to Raymond Parpart, a child of ten years, who had not attended and successfully passed the eighth grade, the opinion