Wooten v. State

Citations

• 24 Fla. 335

Syllabus

<p>1. The fourth section of “an act to suppress gambling houses and gambling,” approved June 7th, 1887, which provides : “ That if any of the implements, devices, or apparatus commonly used in games of chance usually played in gambling houses, or by gamblers, are found in any house, room, booth, shelter or other place, it shall be prima facie evidence that the said house, room or .place where the same are found is kept for the purpose of gambling,” is not unconstitutional.</p> <p>2. The constitutionality of the above section is not impaired by other sections of the same statute, (assuming the latter to be unconstitutional,) making it the duty of the Sheriff or other police officer to seize the implements and have them publicly destroyed in the street in the presence of witnesses, and authorizing any Sheriff, City Marshal or Chief of Police to enter, forcibly if necessary, and without written warrant, any house or other place in which he may have good reason to believe that gambling is being carried on, and arrest any persons violating the act. The former provision or section is entirely independent of the latter sections, and it cannot be held that the Legislature would not have adopted the former without the latter.</p> <p>3. Where certain provisions of a statute are in no wise practically involved in the case under consideration their constitutionality will not be passed on.</p> <p>4. The effect of section 4 of the statute, as sot out above, is to authorize the jury to infer from the proof of the finding of such implements-devices or apparatus that the room they were found in was kept for the purpose of gambling, where there is nothing in the attendant circumstance, or in any of the evidence in the case, raising in their minds a reasonable doubt to the contrary.</p> <p>5. The section in question does not give to proof of such finding the further effect of prima facia proof of the actual use of the instruments as another and independent evidence that the house, roo