People v. Willett

• Decision Date: 13 April 1886
• Parties: PEOPLE v. WILLETT.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

102 N.Y. 251

6 N.E. 301

PEOPLE

v.WILLETT.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 13, 1886.

Appeal from judgment of general term supreme court, Third department, affirming a judgment of a court of oyer and terminer, held in Ulster county, in December, 1884, convicting the defendant of murder in the first degree.

William Lounsbury, for appellant.

A. T. Clearwater, for respondent.

FINCH, J.

This appeal brings up the record alone, and raises merely a question of pleading. The indictment contains nine counts, each charging the prisoner with the crime of murder. To the first three a demurrer was interposed, upon the ground that they did not sufficiently charge the commission of the crime. They aim to allege a murder perpetrated while engaged in the commission of a felony, or in the attempt to commit it; the felony intended being the crime of grand larceny. The defects pointed out are omissions asserted to be necessary to a correct statement of that offense, and consist in a failure to charge the particular intent essential to the crime, and to describe it as grand larceny, so as to make it a felony. In the indictment the property stolen is specifically described, its ownership alleged, and its value stated at a sum greater than $25. The theft is then averred in this form: ‘Did feloniously steal, take, and carry away.’ This language is identical with that used in Phelps v. People, 72 N. Y. 350, where it was held a sufficient averment of the crime of grand larceny, and in the precise words of the statute. The use of the word ‘feloniously’ was deemed a sufficient averment of the intent necessary to constitute the crime, and the value of the property taken was a sum larger than $25, which fact was pleaded by alleging the full value. We do not think this authority is made inapplicable by the later definitions of the Penal Code, § 528. That section defines with considerable detail what acts shall constitute larceny, and what intent shall characterize the crime, and in the end provises that he who, with such intent, does any of such acts, ‘steals such property, and is guilty of larceny.’ The word ‘steals' is thus defined by the statute itself as covering all the prescribed details, and its use in the indictment which charges the taking to have been felonious, or with a criminal intent, sufficiently includes the particular intent needed to constitute the larceny. It was not in the least difficult for the prisoner to understand from the indictment the nature of the crime with which he was charged. We think the pleading sufficiently alleged the commission of or attempt to commit the crime of grand larceny.

There is another answer to the argument in behalf of the prisoner. His demurrer was overruled, and at the close of...