People v. Fitzgerald
| Decision Date | 05 June 1911 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. FITZGERALD. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
Error to District Court, City and County of Denver; George W Allen, Judge.
Simon Fitzgerald was informed against for stealing, purchasing, and receiving a bicycle, knowing the same to have been stolen taken, embezzled, carried, and ridden away, and, from an order sustaining a motion to quash the indictment, the People bring error. Reversed.
Under section 1997, Revised Statutes 1908, 'writs of error * * * lie on behalf of the state * * * to review decisions of the trial court in any criminal case upon questions of law arising upon the trial, motions to quash,' and in other specified cases. No decision of the Supreme Court, however can operate to put a defendant in jeopardy a second time for the same offense. It is under this statute the district attorney prosecutes this writ in behalf of the people, that the rule of pleading involved may be settled. The question for consideration is the ruling of the trial court sustaining a motion to quash the information. That pleading was drawn under, and based upon section 1685, Revised Statutes 1908 which, so far as pertinent here, reads: 'Any person who shall steal, take, embezzle, carry or ride away, any bicycle or any person who shall purchase or receive from any person or conceal or secrete, knowing the same to be stolen, taken, embezzled, carried or ridden away, any bicycle, shall be deemed guilty of larceny.' The information, following closely the language of the statute, in the charging part states that 'Simon Fitzgerald * * * did feloniously steal, take, embezzle, carry, and ride away, and did feloniously then and there purchase and receive from some person to the district attorney aforesaid unknown, and did feloniously conceal and secrete, the said bicycle, then and there knowing the same to be stolen, taken, embezzled, carried, and ridden away.' George W. Stidger, John H. Childs, and H. G. Benson, for the people.
CAMPBELL, C.J. (after stating the facts as above).
The motion to quash was based upon the proposition that the information is 'ambiguous, uncertain, and duplicitous,' in that it fails to inform the defendant for what particular crime he is being prosecuted, and that three distinct and inconsistent crimes against defendant are charged in one and the same count of the information. The court was clearly wrong in sustaining the motion to quash. The statute is in the disjunctive. The stealing of a bicycle by a defendant, or the purchase or receiving from any...
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