Com. v. Lewis
| Decision Date | 11 March 1977 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellant, v. Carlos Lee LEWIS and J. Tildon Crase, Appellees. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
Ed W. Hancock, Atty. Gen., Martin Glazer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frankfort, for appellant.
Eugene Goss, Harlan, William Gary Crabtree, London, for appellees.
In May of 1975 the Harlan County grand jury indicted Carlos Lee Lewis and J. Tildon Crase for knowingly receiving stolen property (an automobile) worth $100 or more in violation of KRS 433.290. 1 The indictment stated that the property "had been stolen from Mildred Dishner of Duffield, Virginia."
KRS 433.290 provided that the offender "shall be liable to the same punishment as the person stealing it. . . . although the principal offender has not been convicted." KRS 433.220, the statute covering grand larceny and automobile theft, called for a penalty of one to five years' imprisonment.
On the day of the trial, after the jury had been empanelled and sworn, Lewis and Crase moved for dismissal of the indictment on the ground that it was not a crime in Kentucky to steal a car in Virginia, and that since there was no penalty in Kentucky for stealing in Virginia there could be no punishment under KRS 433.290 for receiving property that was not stolen in Kentucky. The motion was granted and the indictment was dismissed. The Commonwealth appeals.
To make a long story short, we are of the opinion that under KRS 433.290 the receipt in this state of property stolen in another state was punishable the same as if it had been stolen in this state. That seems to be the general rule and it makes sense. See annotation at 67 A.L.R.2d 752, 754, and Roberson's New Kentucky Criminal Law and Procedure (2d ed.), § 95, p. 151.
Having cleverly deferred their motion, however, until the jury had been sworn, Lewis and Crase now contend that they would be put in double jeopardy by another trial. We do not think so. The attachment of jeopardy merely begins the inquiry as to whether the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment proscribes a retrial. Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 467, 93 S.Ct. 1066, 35 L.Ed.2d 425 (1973). When a trial is aborted at the volition of the defendant himself, the considerations are different from those that prevail when the interruption is precipitated by the prosecution or by the trial court sua sponte. United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 608, 96 S.Ct. 1075, 47 L.Ed.2d 267 (1976). Broadly speaking, if there is no bad faith and the choice has not been forced upon the defendant, he is not in a position to cry double jeopardy when the trial is relaunched. In this instance it is clear that the appellants chose to play a gambit, knowing that the sufficiency of the...
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