Aldrich v. People

• Decision Date: 07 February 1907
• Parties: ALDRICH v. PEOPLE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

224 Ill. 622

79 N.E. 964

ALDRICH

v.PEOPLE.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 22, 1906.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 7, 1907.

Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; George Kersten, Judge.

Roy Aldrich was convicted of larceny, and he brings error. Affirmed.Cantwell & Erbstein and Charles P. R. Macauley, for plaintiff in error.

W. H. Stead, Atty. Gen., John J. Healy, State's Atty., and John R. Newcomer (Howard O. Sprogle, of counsel), for the people.

The record in this case brings up for review the judgment of conviction of Roy Aldrich for the crime of larceny.

The facts developed on the trial were, in substance, as follows: In July, 1905, Miss Flora May Barr checked her trunk at Grand Haven, Mich., for Chicago, and took passage on one of the steamships belonging to the Goodrich Transportation Company. She left Grand Haven about 9:15 on the evening of July 10th and arrived at Chicago about 6 o'clock on the morning of the 11th. At Chicago Miss Barr gave the check for her trunk to a transfer company, with instructions to transfer it to the Burlington depot and recheck it to Oakland, Cal., which was done. Miss Barr saw the baggageman attach the check to her trunk at Grand Haven, where she received a duplicate check, but she did not see the trunk again before leaving Chicago for Oakland. Upon her arrival at Oakland she gave her trunk check to a transfer company, with instructions to deliver the trunk to her at the place where she intended to stop. When the trunk was brought to her she at once discovered that it was not her trunk. She refused to receive the trunk, although it had a check attached to it corresponding to the one which she had received for her trunk at Chicago. The trunk which was sent to Oakland was a zinc-covered trunk with an oval top, while Miss Barr's trunk was a convas-covered trunk and of a different shape. Miss Barr's trunk contained between $300 and $400 worth of wearing apparel and other articles of value which she intended to take with her on her summer trip to California, while the trunk which was brought to her at Oakland was afterwards found to contain nothing except waste paper and rubbish. She immediately notified the Goodrich Transportation Company of the loss of her trunk and shipped the empty trunk back to Chicago. The Goodrich Transportation Company instituted a search for the missing trunk. About a week or 10 days after Miss Barr passed through Chicago an unknown man appeared at the baggage room of the Goodrich transportation Company in Chicago with two trunks, bought a ticket and checked the trunks to Milwaukee. The servants of the transportation company, in handling the two trunks, discovered that they were apparently empty-at least they were very light. It was also noticed that both of these trunks had the locks broken and that they were fastened with ropes or straps. When the boat arrived at Milwaukee plaintiff in error presented two checks and demanded the two trunks. The employés in charge of the boat, suspecting that this transaction might not be all right, refused to deliver the trunks to Aldrich in Milwaukee but agreed to recheck them for him back to Chicago, which they did. The trunks were not called for after their return to Chicago for several days. Finally plaintiff in error presented checks and demanded the two trunks. The transportation company again refused to deliver the trunks to plaintiff in error. Plaintiff in error called a second time and demanded the trunks, and threatened legal proceedings unless they were delivered to him. In the meantime one of the trunks had been positively identified as Miss Barr's lost trunk. It was afterwards learned that a man by the name of Frank Bushre had hauled the two empty trunks from a room occupied by plaintiff in error in a house at 128 Dearborn avenue, Chicago. It is also shown that plaintiff in error and a woman known as ‘Daisy Dean’ occupied the room from which the trunks were obtained by Bushre. Plaintiff in error was then arrested on a charge of larceny of the Barr trunk and its contents. In the room occupied by plaintiff in error and the woman were found substantially all of the articles which Miss Barr had packed in her trunk in Grand Haven, Mich., and these articles were afterwards identified by her as her property. There was also found in this room a large quantity of other goods of various description, among other things, two tickets from Grand Haven to Chicago which had never been used.

The theory of the prosecution is that plaintiff in error, somewhere between Grand Haven and Chicago, transferred the check from the zinc-covered trunk to Miss Barr's trunk and from her trunk to the zinc-covered trunk, and that the plaintiff in error secured possession of Miss Barr's trunk by having the duplicate of the check that was originally attached to the zinc-covered trunk. Plaintiff in error denies all connection with the theft, and claims that he bought the stolen trunk, together with another large trunk, from a man by the name of Doc. Lebey. His explanation as to how he obtained possession of the lost trunk is not corroborated by any testimony in the record or by facts and circumstances.

The indictment charged the plaintiff in error with feloniously stealing one trunk and various articles of personal property, the personal goods and property of the Goodrich Transportation Company, a corporation of the state of Wisconsin. The jury found plaintiff in error guilty, and found the value of the property stolen to be $230. Motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were made and severally overruled, and plaintiff in error was sentenced to an indeterminate term of imprisonment in the penitentiary.

VICKERS, J. (after stating the facts).

1. The court instructed the jury, as a matter of law, that, if one obtains property from the owner or custodian thereof by some sort of a trick or device, for the purpose of stealing and converting the same to his own use, he will be guilty of larceny. Error is assigned upon the giving of this instruction. The contention of plaintiff in error is that, if the property was obtained with the consent of the transportation company, it would not amount to larceny, even though such consent was obtained by means of a trick or device and with the intention of stealing the same.

It is an established rule of the common law relating to the offense of larceny that, if the owner of the goods alleged to have been stolen parts with both the possession and the title of the goods to the alleged thief, not expecting the goods to be returned to the owner or to be disposed of in accordance with his directions, then neither the taking nor the conversion amounts to larceny, and this is true even where the owner is induced to part with the title and possession through the fraud and misrepresentation of the alleged thief. If, however, the owner merely parts with the possession and retains the title, expecting and intending that the goods shall be returned to him or disposed of in some particular manner agreed upon, in such case the subsequent felonious conversion of the property by the alleged thief will relate back and make the taking and conversion a larceny. Welsh v. People, 17 Ill. 339;Stinson v. People, 43 Ill. 397;Murphy v. People, 104 Ill. 528;Johnson v. People, 113 Ill. 99;Quinn v. People, 123 Ill. 333, 15 N. E. 46;Doss v. People, 158 Ill. 660, 41...