Beal v. State

• Decision Date: 17 December 1860
• Citation: 15 Ind. 378
• Parties: Beal v. The State
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

15 Ind. 378

Beal v. The State

Supreme Court of Indiana

December 17, 1860

APPEAL from the Jefferson Circuit Court.

The judgment is reversed. Cause remanded for action, in accordance with this opinion.

J. Y Allison, for appellant.

(1.) Counsel for appellant cited the following authorities: 2 Parker's Crim. R. 590; 2 Johnson's R. (N. Y.) 479; People v. Gardner, id. 477; Simmons v. The Commonwealth, 5 Birney R. 617; State v. Brown, Hawks (N. C.) R. 100.

J. E McDonald, Attorney General, and A. L. Roache, for the State.

OPINION

Perkins J.

Indictment and conviction for larceny. The larceny was committed in Ohio.

On the trial the Court instructed the jury, that where goods are stolen in another State, and soon after, (six weeks in this case,) are brought into this State, the thief may be prosecuted and punished, for the larceny, in this State. This instruction goes upon what is claimed to be the common law doctrine, that a larceny is a continuing act, and is complete in every jurisdiction into which the stolen goods are taken by the thief. See 4 Black. Comm. 303-4. We doubt the existence of this doctrine in Indiana, so far as it is applicable to offenses committed in another State.

Our criminal law is entirely statutory, and not of common law origin. Our grand jury is a local tribunal, and can not inquire into offenses committed out of its jurisdiction. It can not summon witnesses, nor take their depositions, where they are in other States. Now, where goods had been stolen in another State and brought into this, the facts transpiring in this State, viz.: the possession of the goods, and the selling of them even, would not, of themselves, constitute a larceny. The jury would have to go further, and prove the taking and the felonious intent at the time thereof, in another State. They would, in short, have to prove a complete larceny in another State to make out a larceny at all.

Further; such larceny, being complete in the State where the goods were taken, if a larceny any where, would be punishable in such State; and punishment in this, would not bar punishment in that.

Again; the Constitution of the United States provides that fugitives from justice shall be delivered up, by the State into which they have fled, for punishment in the State where the offense was committed. Now, suppose we were trying such a fugitive here, or had already sent him to the state prison, when the requisition for his return should arrive, should we not be compelled to deliver him up, at once, with, perhaps, his trial half completed?

Our constitution and sta...