State v. Gibbons

Citations

• 118 Wash. 171
• 203 P. 390
• 1922 Wash. LEXIS 645

Syllabus

<p>Intoxicating Liquobs (6) — Pbohibition—Unlawful Possession Statutes — Eighteenth Amendment. Initiative measure No. 3, as amended by Laws 1917, p. 60, § 11, providing that it shall be unlawful for any person to have in his possession any intoxicating liquor is not nugatory as in conflict with the Federal statute (41 Stat. L., p. 317, § 33) declaring “it shall not be unlawful to possess liquors in one’s private dwelling”; inasmuch as the state statute covers the offense of possession away from one’s dwelling, and is not superseded by the national law except in so far as it is in conflict therewith.</p> <p>Statutes (33-36) — Amendment—Time fob — “Enactment” of Statute — Construction. The initiative and referendum provision of the constitution (Const., Amendt. 7) prohibiting the amendment of a law approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon “within a period of two years following such enactment,” contemplates the time of its complete enactment in a legal sense; accordingly, a provision of the act itself postponing the time of its taking effect to a later date would not defeat the power of the legislature to amend the act at any time after the expiration of two years from its proclamation by the governor.</p> <p>Criminal Law (57) — Complaint—Abandonment — New Complaint Charging Higher Offense — Rights of Accused — Jurisdiction. The abandonment of a prosecution instituted by a prosecuting attorney in a justice court does not militate against his power to file a new complaint charging a higher offense to be tried by the justice as a committing magistrate and thereafter proceed upon proper information filed in the superior court to a trial of the accused for a higher offense of which the latter court alone has jurisdiction.</p> <p>Intoxicating Liquors (30, 49) — Unlawful Possession — Prior Convictions — Evidence—Admissibility. Laws 1917, p. 61, § 15, amending initiative measure No. 3, increasing the punishment for a second violation of the liquor prohibition la