People v. Grizzle
| Decision Date | 18 November 1942 |
| Docket Number | No. 26810.,26810. |
| Citation | 381 Ill. 278,44 N.E.2d 917 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. GRIZZLE. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Circuit Court, Lawrence County; Roy E. Pearce, Judge.
Harley Grizzle was convicted of receiving and aiding in concealment of stolen liquor, and he brings error.
Reversed and remanded for new trial.Sumner & Lewis, of Lawrenceville, A. W. Schimmel, of Pittsfield, and Karns & Bandy, of East St. Louis, for plaintiff in error.
George F. Barrett, Atty. Gen., and Maurice E. Gosnell's State's Atty., of Lawrenceville, for the People.
The grand jury of Lawrence county returned an indictment against plaintiff in error consisting of three counts. The first count charged him with burglarizing a wholesale liquor store owned by one John Schmitt in the city of Lawrenceville, and stealing therefrom ten cases of liquor of different brands. The second count charged him with larceny of the liquor described in the first count. By the third count he was charged with receiving and aiding in concealing certain liquor, the property of John Schmitt, knowing the same to have been stolen. The liquor described and alleged to have been received and concealed, in the third count, was a part of the same kinds and quantities of liquor described in the first and second counts. Upon a trial before a jury, plaintiff in error was found not guilty under the first and second counts of the indictment. The jury, however, found him guilty of the offense charged in the third count. The value of the property was fixed at $53. After overruling motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment, plaintiff in error was sentenced to the penitentiary for an indeterminate term of from one to ten years. In the judgment was included the advisory recommendation of the court that the minimum duration or limit of imprisonment be five years, and the maximum, ten years. To reverse the judgment, plaintiff in error has brought the case to this court by writ of error. He contends that the evidence is insufficient to establish the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Particularly, it is contended that the property alleged to have been found in the possession of plaintiff in error was not shown to have been stolen by some other person; that the plaintiff in error was not shown to have received and aided in concealing the property, knowing that it had been stolen, and that it was not shown that he received the property for his own gain or to prevent the owner from again possessing it. These questions raised by plaintiff in error make it necessary to review, somewhat in detail, the facts in the record.
The facts necessary to a decision on the questions raised, may be summarized as follows: Sometime between the evening of November 3, 1940, and the morning of November 4, a building located in the city by Lawrenceville, in Lawrence county, was burglarized. This was a wholesale liquor business belonging to John Schmitt, doing business under the trade name of Ambraw Distributing Company. When the owner of the business and his employee reached the place of business about eight o'clock on the morning of November 4, they discovered the place had been broken into. Previously, on October 31, an inventory of the stock of liquor on hand was made as of the close of business on that date. This inventory was made in accordance with a government regulation requiring such inventories monthly, and also requiring records of all sales to be kept by wholesale dealers in liquor. When it was discovered that the store had been entered, an inventory of the liquor then in stock was made. By comparing this inventory with the inventory made on October 31, it was discovered that ten cases of liquor had been removed from the stock. Of the liquor missing, there were five cases of one brand, two cases each of two other brands, and an additional case of still a different brand.
Plaintiff in error lived in Vincennes, Indiana. On the morning of November 4, certain police officers of the city of Vincennes, which is located across the river and a short distance from Lawrenceville, went to the home of plaintiff in error. They placed him under arrest and took him to police headquarters for the purpose of questioning him in regard to a matter not involved in this case. The record indicates that at that time the police officers of Vincennes had no knowledge of the burglary here involved. After they reached the police station and had questioned plaintiff in error with reference to some other charge, plaintiff in error gave the keys to his home, or living quarters, to the chief of police and requested him to take charge of certain articles in his home, including some cash and some whiskey. In response to this request, the police officers went to the home of plaintiff in error where they found, among other things, twenty pint bottles of one brand of liquor, twelve bottles of another, and two bottles and one bottle partly filled, of another brand. The liquor found in the home of plaintiff in error was liquor of the same brands and was in similar bottles to some of the liquor which was claimed to have been stolen from the place of business burglarized in Lawrenceville the night before. The bottles of liquor found at defendant's home contained no marks of identification, and there was no way by which they could be positively identified as a part of the liquor stolen in the burglary, except that they were the same brands and contained in similar bottles.
On the trial of the case, the State's Attorney attempted to identify the liquor found in plaintiff in error's possession as a part of the stolen liquor by showing that the government stamps pasted over the tops of the bottles in the shipment of liquor, from which it was claimed the stolen liquor was taken, were numbered with consecutive serial numbers. In support of this theory, he offered in evidence thirteen bottles which were in the wholesale house and had been placed on the shelf for retail sales. It was shown that these thirteen bottles were a part of the shipment in which the stolen liquor was delivered to the wholesale house. The serial numbers on the stamps attached to the bottles of liquor found in the possession of plaintiff in error were within the range between the highest and lowest serial numbers on the stamps attached to the thirteen bottles which were not stolen.
The court admitted this evidence on the theory that it tended to identify the liquor found in the possession of plaintiff in error as a part of the shipment received by the wholesale distributor in which the thirteen bottles, not stolen, were also contained. It was properly admitted.
The State's Attorney then attempted to further identify the liquor found in the possession of plaintiff in error, as part of the stolen goods, by attempting to show that the government stamps attached to the bottles found in the possession of plaintiff in error, were stamps used by the distillery which bottled and shipped the liquor to the wholesaler in Lawrenceville. In attempting to make such proof, the State's Attorney examined a witness by the name of Earl Murphy, who was employed by the distilling company by whom the liquor was bottled and shipped to the wholesaler in Lawrenceville. He testified that in bottling whiskey for shipment to wholesale distributors, the distillery would obtain from the Collector of Internal Revenue the stamps to be placed over the tops of the bottles; the stamps when received from the Collector of Internal Revenue were turned over to the gauger in charge of the distillery as the agent of the government. At the beginning of the day the gauger would issue to the distillery the number of stamps anticipated as necessary for use during the day. The gauger was a government officer or employee, and not an employee of the distillery. He then issued the stamps to the distillery in blocks of about one hundred each. Before the stamps were used, they were detached from each other so that a separate stamp would be available for each bottle as the bottles moved in the line of the process of bottling. When the bottles were filled and corked, a stamp would be placed over the top of each bottle. No record of the serial numbers on the stamps used was kept. The stamps were not placed on the bottles in any particular order as to serial numbers. The State's Attorney then attempted to prove by this witness that stamps of the serial numbers on the bottles found in possession of plainti...
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...in conjunction with the appearance of the defendant. See, Slocum v. People, 120 Colo. 86, 207 P.2d 970 (1949); People v. Grizzle, 381 Ill. 278, 44 N.E.2d 917 (1942); Commonwealth v. Hines, 282 Ky. 791, 140 S.W.2d 386 (1940)." 199 Neb. at 819, 261 N.W.2d at We conclude that where the exact a......
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People v. DeFilippis
...possession of stolen goods is not in itself sufficient to convict one of the crime of receiving stolen goods, (People v. Grizzle, 381 Ill. 278, 44 N.E.2d 917; People v. Klapperich, 370 Ill. 588, 19 N.E.2d 579) but, at the same time, our decisions establish that possession, actual, construct......
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... ... People v. Piszczek, 404 Ill. 465, 89 N.E.2d 387; People v. Harris, 394 Ill. 325, 68 N.E.2d 728; People v. Grizzle, 381 Ill. 278, 44 N.E.2d ... 917. The element of guilty knowledge on the part of the receiver must be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be present at the time the goods were received by him. People v. Rubin, 361 Ill. 311, 197 N.E. 862; People v. Prall, 314 Ill. 518, 145 N.E. 610 ... ...
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