State v. Ashpole

• Decision Date: 11 July 1905
• Citation: 104 N.W. 281,127 Iowa 680
• Parties: STATE v. ASHPOLE.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

127 Iowa 680

104 N.W. 281

STATE

v.ASHPOLE.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

July 11, 1905.

Appeal from District Court, Winnebago County; J. F. Clyde, Judge.

The defendant was convicted of larceny, and appeals. Reversed.Wesley Martin and Geo. E. Pike, for appellant.

Chas. W. Mullan, Atty. Gen., and Lawrence De Graff, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

LADD, J.

The Twenty-Ninth General Assembly enacted that “if any tenant of farm lands shall, with intent to defraud, sell, conceal or in any manner dispose of any of the grain, or other annual products thereof upon which there is a landlord's lien for unpaid rent, without the written consent of the landlord, he shall be guilty of larceny and punished accordingly.” Section 1, c. 146, p. 106. “The payment of the rent for the lands upon which such grain or other annual products were raised at or before the time the same falls due, shall be a bar to any prosecution under section (1) hereof, and no prosecution shall be commenced until such rent be wholly due.” Section 2 (page 107) of same chapter. The provisions of the last section are such as to suggest that the design in creating the offense may have been to aid the landlord in collecting rent, rather than the denunciation and punishment of crime. However this may be, it is plain from the language employed that the offense is not a continuing one, but that each sale, concealment, or disposal of any of the grain or annual products burdened with the lien, if with fraudulent intent, constitutes a complete offense, providing, of course, the tenant is not able to settle before the debt matures. See State v. Orr, 89 Iowa, 613, 57 N. W. 412;State v. Jameson, 117 Iowa, 312, 90 N. W. 622. But the indictment charges “that said Cy Ashpole, on or about the 1st day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and three, in the county aforesaid, and at various and other times and dates, the exact dates and times of which are to this grand jury unknown, between the said 1st day of August, 1903, and the finding of this indictment, without the written consent of the landlord, did willfully and feloniously, and with intent to defraud, sell, conceal, and dispose of grain and other annual products, being oats and corn, to the value of sixty dollars and over, upon which there was then and there, and is at the time of the finding of this indictment, a landlord's lien for unpaid rent; said grain and products being then and there raised and grown during the season of 1903 on the premises known as the ‘Watts Farm,’ in section thirty-one (S. 31), township ninety-nine (T. 99), range twenty-five (R. 25), Winnebago county, Iowa; the said defendant, Cy Ashpole, being then and there the tenant occupying said...