Courts, understanding this principle, long strove to
establish the spirit intent of a law before issuing a ruling on any controversy
touching that particular law. To illustrate the absurdities, and even
atrocities, which could result if a law’s intent were disregarded, the Holy
Trinity Court cited numerous cases, including the following two. The State v.
Smith Clark, 1860 Supreme Court of New Jersey The “offense” was described in
the case:
The defendant Smith Clark did maliciously and willfully break
down twenty panels of rail fence belonging to and in the possession of George
Arnwine. The law provides that if any person or persons shall willfully break
down or destroy any fences belonging to any other person they shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanor. Smith Clark had
confessed to intentionally destroying George Arnwine’s fence; therefore, under
this law, he should be found guilty and sentenced. However, there was more:
The defendant offered to show, by way of defense, that at
the several times when he broke down the fence, he had title to the land upon
which it was built, and that the fence which was destroyed was erected upon his
land. The fence that Clark broke down was wrongly built by Arnwine on Clark’s property.
Despite its wording, the law clearly had not been designed to prosecute Clark
for tearing down someone else’s fence built on his property; Arnwine was the
real abuser of the law. The court thus correctly concluded:
The language of the act, if construed literally,
evidently leads to an absurd result. If a literal construction of the words of
a statute be absurd, the act must be so construed as to avoid the absurdity.
The legislature felt the intent of the law was obvious; it could never have foreseen
such an attempt to misapply its law by a zealous prosecutor. Had the court
applied the law solely by its wording and not according to its intent, it would
have created an injustice while supposedly administering “justice.” United
States v. Kirby, 1868 United States Supreme Court
