People v. Jaffe

• Decision Date: 21 June 1906
• Citation: 78 N.E. 169,185 N.Y. 497
• Parties: PEOPLE v. JAFFE.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

185 N.Y. 497

78 N.E. 169

PEOPLE

v.JAFFE.

Court of Appeals of New York.

June 21, 1906.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.

Samuel Jaffe was convicted by the Court of General Sessions in and for the county of New York of an attempt to receive stolen property, knowing it to have been stolen, in violation of Pen. Code § 550. From a judgment of the Appellate Division (98 N. Y. Supp. 486), affirming such conviction, defendant appeals. Reversed.

Chase, J., dissenting.

Henry W. Unger, for appellant.

Wm. Travers Jerome, Dist. Atty. (Robert C. Taylor, of counsel), for respondent.

WILLARD BARTLETT, J.

The indictment charged that the defendant on the 6th day of October, 1902, in the county of New York, feloniously received 20 yards of cloth, of the value of 25 cents a yard, belonging to the copartnership of J. W. Goddard & Son, knowing that the said property had been feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away from the owners. It was found under section 550 of the Penal Code, which provides that a person who buys or receives any stolen property knowing the same to have been stolen is guilty of criminally receiving such property. The defendant was convicted of an attempt to commit the crime charged in the indictment. The proof clearly showed, and the district attorney conceded upon the trial, that the goods which the defendant attempted to purchase on October 6, 1902, had lost their character as stolen goods at the time when they were offered to the defendant and when he sought to buy them. In fact the property had been restored to the owners and was wholly within their control and was offered to the defendant by their authority and through their agency. The question presented by this appeal, therefore, is whether upon an indictment for receiving goods, knowing them to have been stolen, the defendant may be convicted of an attempt to commit the crime where it appears without dispute that the property which he sought to receive was not in fact stolen property.

The conviction was sustained by the Appellate Division chiefly upon the authority of the numerous cases in which it has been held that one may be convicted of an attempt to commit a crime notwithstanding the existence of facts unknown to him which would have rendered the complete perpetration of the crime itself impossible. Notably among these are what may be called the ‘Pickpocket Cases,’ where, in prosecutions for attempts to commit larceny from the person by pocket-picking, it is held not to be necessary to allege or prove that there was anything in the pocket which could be the subject of larceny. Commonwealth v. McDonald, 5 Cush. (Mass.) 365;Rogers v. Commonwealth, 5 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 463;State v. Wilson, 30 Conn. 500;People v. Moran, 123 N. Y. 254, 25 N. E. 412, 10 L. R. A. 109, 20 Am. St. Rep. 732. Much reliance was also placed in the opinion of the learned Appellate Division upon the case of People v. Gardner, 144 N. Y. 119, 38 N. E. 1003, 28 L. R. A. 699, 43 Am. St. Rep. 741, where a conviction of an attempt to commit the crime of extortion was upheld, although the woman from whom the defendant sought to obtain money by a threat to accuse her of a crime was not induced to pay the money by fear, but was acting at the time as a decoy for the police, and hence could not have been subjected to the influence of fear. In passing upon the question here presented for our determination, it is important to bear in mind precisely what it was that the defendant attempted to do. He simply made an effort to purchase certain specific pieces of cloth. He believed the cloth to be stolen property, but it was not such in fact. The purchase, therefore, if it had been completely effected, could not constitute the crime of receiving stolen property, knowing it to be stolen, since there could be no such thing as knowledge on the part of the defendant of a nonexistent fact, although there might be a belief on his part that the fact existed. As Mr. Bishop well says, it is a mere truism that there can be no receiving of stolen goods which have not been stolen. 2 Bishop's New Crim. Law, § 1140. It is equally difficult to perceive how there can be an attempt to receive stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, when they have not been stolen in fact.

The crucial distinction between the case before us and the pickpocket cases, and others involving the same principle, lies not in the possibility or impossibility of the commission of the crime, but in the fact that, in the present case, the act, which it was doubtless the intent of the defendant to commit would not have been a crime if it had been consummated. If he had actually paid for the goods which he desired to buy and received them into his possession, he would have committed no offense under section 550 of the Penal Code, because the very definition in that section of the offense of criminally receiving property makes it an essential element of the crime that the accused shall have known the property to have been stolen or wrongfully appropriated in such a manner as to constitute larceny. This knowledge being a material ingredient of the offense it is manifest that it cannot exist unless the property has in fact been stolen or larcenously appropriated. No man can know that to be so which is not so in truth and in fact. He may believe it to be so but belief is not enough under this statute. In the present case it appeared, not only by the proof, but by the express concession of the prosecuting officer, that the goods which the defendant intended to purchase had lost their character as stolen goods at the time of the proposed transaction. Hence, no matter what was the motive of the defendant, and no matter what he supposed, he could do no act which was intrinsically adapted to the then present successful perpetration of the crime denounced by this section of the Penal Code, because neither he nor any one in the world could know that the property was stolen property inasmuch as it was not, in fact, stolen property. In the pickpocket cases the immediate act which the defendant had in contemplation was an act...