Lusinchi

This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction of criminal libel.

The facts leading up to the publication complained of are briefly these: The defendant and one Leon L. Rey were publishers of rival French newspapers in the city of San Francisco and were at swords’ points in journalism. Leon L. Rey had been the chairman of a committee which had in charge the finances of a celebration of the fall of the Bastille, during the course of which the sum of six hundred dollars of the funds provided for the celebration and passing through the hands of the committee, disappeared. The whereabouts of this money not having been explained by the chairman of the committee to the satisfaction of the defendant, as editor of Le Franco-Californien, he published in his said newspaper the article complained of in this ease. Thereupon he was arrested, tried, and convicted of criminal libel, and fined the sum of five hundred dollars, from which judgment he prosecutes this appeal.

The first contention of the appellant is that the article complained of does not in itself contain matter which was sufficient to bring its writer and publisher within the terms of the section of the Penal Code defining…