At a former term of this court, in the case of O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U.S. 323, 12 Sup. Ct. 693, we were asked to hold certain provisions of the laws of the state of Vermont concerning the importation and sale of intoxicating liquors void, because they conflicted with the constitution of the United States wherein it confers upon congress exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce and forbids cruel and unusual punishments. But the court was of opinion that the record in that case did not disclose that any federal question had been raised or decided in the supreme court of Vermont, and the writ of error was accordingly dismissed.
In the present case the assignments of error raised no question as to the character of the punishment inflicted upon the accused. Nor do the facts of the present case call upon us to consider the validity of those portions of the Vermont statutes which concern intoxicating liquors as articles of interstate commerce.
But certain federal questions are sufficiently presented in this record, which have been argued with great ability, and which it is our duty to now consider.
The first contention is that the information under which the plaintiff in error was tried and convicted was defective in such essential particulars as to deprive him of his liberty and property without 'due process of law.' It is said that the information does not charge any specific offense; that it does not state with any reasonable certainty the time when the offenses charged, or any or either of them, occurred; that the name of no person to whom liquor was alleged to have been sold, furnished, or given away is stated; that neither the place where the sales are claimed to have taken place, the kind or quantity of intoxicating liquor so disposed of, nor any other circumstance that would tend to identify the transactions referred to, is stated; that such an information does not protest that accused in the least against being prosecuted for one crime and convicted of another; that under this information it is and must remain utterly uncertain what particular one of many offenses the accused was convicted of; that the record of an acquittal or conviction upon such an information forms no bar to a second prosecution for the same offense.
While we are not relieved from considering these obligations by the mere fact that the offenses charged arose under a statute, and were proceeded in in a court of a state, it is yet obvious that our concern in them can go no further than to inquire whether the plaintiff in error was deprived of the rights and immunities secured to him by the federal constitution.
Several of the objections specified merely raise questions of form, and, as such, were conclusively ruled by the state court. But it is insisted that in all criminal prosecutions the accused must be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him; that in no case can there be, in criminal proceedings, due process of law, where the accused is not thus informed, and that the information which he is to receive is that which will acquaint him with the essential particulars of the offense, so that he may appear in court prepared to meet every feature of the accusation against him.
Conceding that this is a correst statement of the rights of an accused person, and that, if deprived of such rights, he may properly invoke the protection of the constitution of the United States, our reading of this record has not satisfied us that the plaintiff in error has any just grounds of complaint. We adopt, in this regard, the views and language of the supreme court of the state: