CANAL ZONE V. HOUSTON.24

cured by the fact that he may have had independent knowledge of his own.- A contrary rule would lead to unsatisfactory and dangerous results and make the administration of law depend upon extraneous facts' instead of upon matters of record. Crude justice may be meted out by omitting all legal forms and requirements; and indeed without any judicial proceeding, but this is not what is meant by the section referred to in reference to technical -Frrors. This section does not mean that facts essential to the validity of an information can be dispensed with and that the Supreme Court will regard as a technical error, a failure to allege an essential fact such as the murder itself, the time and place thereof, or the place of death.
In every information for murder heretofore filed in the Canal Zone, the allegation of the place of death had been recognized as an essential prerequisite. In the case of the Government vs. Blas Martinez, the information alleged that the deceased "did languish, and thus languishing did, at the hospital at Ancon, in said Canal Zone, and on the 23d day of December, A. D. 1907, there die." In the case of the Government vs. Ortega, the information alleged that the deceased "did languish, and so languishing, died of said mortal wound at the Ancon Hospital, Ancon, C. Z., on the 26th day of December, A. D. 1911. Why so essential an averment was omitted in the present case is difficult to understand but it must be said that the attempt to support the information without such averment rests -upon fallacious argument and without the authority of any court. The case should be reversed for this manifest error.
Now, as to the defendant's right to a jury. In the first place it is doubtful, to say the least, if an information can be drawn for murder in the second degree so as to preclude the right of the tribunal trying the case to find a verdict of murder in the first degree. The Supreme Court of California had held that it could not be done, and our statutes are in all respects similar to the statutes of California. In People vs. Nichol, 34 Cal, page 217, the court said:
As we held in the case of People vs. King, 27 Cal., 507, it is not the province of the Grand jury to determine the degree of murder. That duty is, by the statutes, expressly cast upon the trial jury, and the designation of the degree by the Grand Jury is, therefore, as, idle as a recommendation to the mercy of the court appended to a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. If the Grand Jury undertakes to designate the degrees, such designation is to be disregarded. The jury may, notwithstanding, find the defendant guilty in the first degree, if, in their judgment, the testimony is sufficient.

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