Furnace v. State
| Decision Date | 30 June 1899 |
| Docket Number | 18,948 |
| Citation | 54 N.E. 441,153 Ind. 93 |
| Parties | Furnace v. The State |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Sullivan Circuit Court.
Affirmed.
W. H Pigg and W. T. Douthitt, for appellant.
W. L Taylor, Attorney-General, Merrill Moores and Rowland Evans for State.
Appellant was convicted of having committed the crime of petit larceny and sentenced to be imprisoned in the state prison. The only alleged error urged by his counsel in their brief relates to the court's overruling a motion to quash the information and affidavit. It is insisted that the information upon which he was convicted is bad for duplicity, and that the motion to quash for this reason ought to have been sustained. The information charges: "That William Furnace * * * on the 29th day of March, 1898, at the county of Sullivan and State of Indiana, did then and there unlawfully and feloniously steal, take, and carry away of the personal goods and chattels of said Jane Engle, $ 5 in money, and the personal goods and chattels of Samuel Engle, $ 4.50 in money, contrary," etc.
It is urged by appellant's counsel that the pleading embraces two distinct and separate larcenies in the same count and is thereby rendered bad for duplicity. The question in respect to the duplicity of the information depends upon whether it prima facie can be said to disclose that two distinct, separate offenses were committed by the defendant in stealing the property as charged. The amount of money stolen in the aggregate was $ 9.50, $ 5 of which, it appears from the averments of the pleading, belonged to Jane Engle, and the remainder to Samuel Engle. The information, with a slight or immaterial change, may be read as follows: That William Furnace, at the time and place stated, "did then and there unlawfully and feloniously steal, take and carry away" $ 5 in money of the personal goods of Jane Engle and $ 4.50 in money of the personal goods of Samuel Engle. Then, as an adverb of time, means "at that time," referring to the time stated, and the necessary import of the words "then and there," as employed in the information, is that the larceny of the $ 9.50 in money as a whole, a part of which is charged as belonging to Jane Engle and a part to Samuel Engle, occurred at the same time and place and constituted but a single transaction.
The complainant below in this case was the State of Indiana, and the stealing of several articles of property at one and the same time, as a part of the same transaction, can constitute but one offense against the State, notwithstanding the fact that such articles belonged to several owners. Under such circumstances the State could not split up the offense or crime, and make distinct parts thereof the basis of separate prosecutions. If it elected to prosecute the accused for a part of the crime, it would not thereafter be permitted to prosecute him for other parts not included in the first prosecution. Jackson v. State, 14 Ind. 327; Clem v. State, 42 Ind. 420, 13 Am. Rep. 369.
We recognize no good reason to depart from what may be considered the great current of authority and hold the pleading in question bad when it can reasonably be said that it discloses that the larceny complained of was but a single act or transaction in violation of the law against larceny although the property which was the subject of the crime belonged to several different persons. The particular ownership, as charged in the pleading, of the money stolen did not give character to the act of stealing it, but was merely a part of the description of the particular crime charged to have been committed. The information, prima facie, under the circumstances, can be said to charge but one offense against the State, and is not open to the objection that it is bad for duplicity. The following authorities support our conclusion: Hoiles v. United States, 3...
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