CANAL ZONE V. BLISSETT & MCPHERSON.

criminal laws of the Zone by reference to the general trend of the practice in and decisions of the Federal courts and the courts of the various States of the United States. The crimes triable by the statutory Federal courts are in general statutory and not, as such, common-law crimes; but from an early date Federal courts have consistently held that while the common law can not be recognized as the source of their criminal jurisdiction this does not exclude the operation of the common law as a standard of interpretation. And an examination of decisions of the Federal courts will show that while the Federal courts have no jurisdiction of offenses not declared to be such by Federal statutes, yet, as these statutes mostly designate offenses by title, the Federal courts resort to the common law for definition of such offenses and the common law, therefore, becomes the arbiter of what such offenses are. It is equally true in the Canal Zone, that where an offense is designated in the law merely by title, if the offense thus designated is susceptible of interpretation and definition by resort to the decision of the courts of jurisdictions in which such title is a common-law or statutory designation of an offense, then such interpretation and definition is within the authority of the courts of the Zone.
Executive Order of January 9, 1008, subdivision 8, provides that: Every person who shall ;n the Canal Zone engage in any kind of disorderly conduct * shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
The statutes of several of the States contain provisions similar to the above with reference to disorderly conduct and such provisions are without definition or specification of what constitutes disorderly conduct. The courts of States where such provisions are in force have interpreted the term by judicial decision. The term "disorderly conduct" has, therefore, become a title descriptive of an offense well known to the law, and since "any kind of disorderly conduct" is made a misdemeanor in the Canal Zone, an act which is disorderly conduct is an "unlawful act not amounting to a felony."
The court below found a general verdict of guilty as charged in the information. If, therefore, the information and the facts sustain the verdict it is unimportant on what theory the trial court arrived at its verdict. The information not only charges the defendants with causing the death of the boy, Gaitan, while they were engaged in the "commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony," but the first, third, and sixth counts.

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