People v. Schweitzer

• Decision Date: 12 July 1871
• Citation: People v. Schweitzer, 23 Mich. 301 (Mich. 1871)
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: The People v. William Schweitzer

23 Mich. 301

The People v. William Schweitzer

Supreme Court of Michigan

July 12, 1871

Heard July 7, 1871 [Syllabus Material]

Exceptions certified from the recorder's court of the city of Detroit.

The defendant was charged with the larceny from the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company of three pairs of Arctic overshoes, seven pairs of boys' boots, twenty-one shoe-brushes, one counter-brush, two pairs of gaiters and one box of hats. On the trial, one John T. Stewart was called and sworn as a witness on behalf of the People, and testified in substance as follows: That he knew the defendant; that on or about the 14th of March (the time of the larceny alleged in the information), the defendant took him into a small office in the cattle-yard of the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad Company, in the city of Detroit, and into the loft or vacant space above said office, and showed him a box like the one produced in court, opening the same way, and with nails projecting in the same manner, in which box there were some small boots, Arctic overshoes, six blacking-brushes, a counter-brush and a box of flower or chalk; that he asked defendant where they came from, and defendant told him they came from the cars; that defendant's father kept the cattle-yard in which the office was; that this loft was a vacant space not used for any thing, only about two feet high from the peak of the roof to the joists; that this office was sometimes locked and sometimes unlocked; that he went in there a second time with defendant and O'Leary; that the defendant took one pair of big Arctic overshoes from the box and said he was going to keep them for his father to use that defendant took out the six brushes and the overshoes; that defendant told him he (defendant) took the brushes and overshoes to his father's store on the corner of Franklin and Hastings street, in said city; that he and defendant tried to sell a pair of them and could not; that they took one pair and he sold them for one dollar to Con. O'Leary; that they used the place once before.

The prosecuting attorney then asked this question: "Did you use it before with the defendant for storing purposes?" To which the defendant's counsel objected, for the reason that it was immaterial and irrelevant, and related to another and distinct transaction from the one charged in the information. The court overruled the objection, and the defendant's counsel excepted. The witness answered: "Defendant and myself, and one James Dumphy, about a month or two months before, did use it for storing tobacco."

James Dumphy was then sworn as a witness, and the following question was put to him by the prosecuting attorney, viz: "What do you know about defendant and you and Stewart stealing tobacco from the cars of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad Company, and storing in the loft in the office at the cattle-yard?"

Objected to by defendant's counsel, for the reason that it was irrelevant, and related to a different larceny from the one charged in the information. The counsel for the prosecution insisted on the testimony, on the ground that it tended to show prior intimacy between Stewart and Schweitzer, and that...