People v. Miccichi, Motion No. 349.

• Decision Date: 02 October 1933
• Docket Number: Motion No. 349.
• Citation: 264 Mich. 581,250 N.W. 316
• Parties: PEOPLE v. MICCICHI.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

264 Mich. 581

250 N.W. 316

PEOPLE

v.MICCICHI.

Motion No. 349.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Oct. 2, 1933.

Appeal from Recorder's Court of Detroit; Christopher E. Stein, Judge.

Proceeding by the People against Leo Miccichi. From an order denying defendant's motion to quash an information charging him with robbery while armed, defendant appeals.

Affirmed.

Argued before the Entire Bench.

George K. Williams, of Detroit, for appellant.

Patrick H. O'Brien, Atty. Gen., and Harry S. Toy, Pros. Atty., and Verne C. Amberson and Edmund E. Shepherd, Asst. Pros. Attys., all of Detroit, for the People.

McDONALD, Chief Justice.

During the robbery of a jewelry store in the city of Detroit owned and operated by Harry Leighton, one Mike Vunjak, a customer, was shot and killed. Defendant Leo Miccichi was arrested and charged with the murder. The information under which he was tried charged that he ‘feloniously, willfully and of his malice aforethought, did kill and murder one, Mike Vunjak.’ He was acquitted but rearrested charged with robbery while armed growing out of the same transaction. Upon arraignment, he entered a plea of autrefois acquit and moved to quash the information on a plea of former jeopardy. The trial court denied the motion and defendant has appealed.

‘The Legislature has made the crime of robbery a constituent element of murder in the first degree, where death ensues from the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate the robbery. Evidently, the Legislature had in mind that robbery from the person is accompanied by violence, oftentimes by the use of deadly weapons, by wounding and maining the victim, as well as by putting him in bodily fear. In order to protect human life and property, the lawmaking power declared robbery to be murder in the first degree where the death of a victim ensued in the perpetration of the robbery irrespective of the fact whether the violence used was great or small. * * * The guilt of murder in the first degree attaches to the act of robbery under the statute.’ State v. Mowser, 92 N. J. Law, 474, 106 A. 416, 419,4 A. L. R. 700.

Robbery is an essential ingredient of that class of first-degree murder defined in our statute, section 16708, Comp. Laws 1929. The robbery and murder are held to be a single criminal act. Therefore an acquittal of either robbery or murder is a bar to the conviction for the other. Os if Harry Leighton, the victim of the robbery, had been killed and the defendant had been acquitted of his murder, such acquittal would have been a bar to his prosecution for robbery. But in perpetrating the robbery in...