State v. . Bagwell

Davis, J. after stating the facts: The following is the act under which the defendants are indicted: “Any person who wilfully, and without authority, opens and reads, or causes to be opened or read,'a sealed letter or telegram, or publishes the whole or any portion of such letter or telegram, knowing it to have been opened or read without authority, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” &c. Acts of 1889, ch. 41, §2. This indictment is for an offence created by statute, and it not only fails to follow the language of the statute, descriptive of the offence, but, by the most liberal construction, it cannot be made to charge that the defendants opened or read a “sealed letter or telegram,” or that they “published the whole or any portion of such letter or telegram knowing it to have been opened and read without authority,” and these are necessary words, descriptive of the offence, without which the indictment fails to charge any offence under the statute. State v. Deal, 92 N. C., 802; State v. Hall, 93 N. C., 571; State v. Aldridge, 86 N. C., 680; State v. Watkins, 101 N. C., 702, and cases there cited. It is insisted for the State that the letter was “received through the United States mail,” and the material charge here was the unlawful publishing and making known its contents "without authority. We do not see how this can aid the indictment. The statute does not make it an offence to open, read and make public a letter received through the United States mail, but it must be a ‘'sealed letter,” and opened or read without authority, or published “knowing it to have been opened or read without authority.” This is not charged, and the indictment was properly quashed. Affirmed.