State v. Bishop

• Decision Date: 30 June 1875
• Citation: 73 N.C. 44
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. BIRD BISHOP.

73 N.C. 44

STATE

v.BIRD BISHOP.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

June Term, 1875.

*1 Upon an indictment for larceny, where the evidence is circumstantial, the acts, declarations and opportunities of the prisoner are competent evidence. But the acts and opportunities of a third party are not competent in such case, unless made so by other direct evidence connecting such third party with the transaction.

The jury, upon a trial for larceny, in the absence of counsel, returned a verdict of “guilty of the larceny of a fifty dollar note,” and the Court informed the jury, that the prisoner was not indicted for stealing the bill, but the trunk, and the jury retired and brought in a verdict of “guilty of the larceny of the trunk as charged in the bill of indictment:” Held, that as the verdict as first rendered was not received nor recorded, and the jury had not been discharged, it was competent for them to correct the inadvertence so as to make the verdict responsive to the indictment.

( State v. May, 4 Dev. 328; State v. Duncan, 6 Ired. 236; State v. White, 68 N. C. Rep. 158, cited and approved.)

INDICTMENT, Larceny, tried at the Spring Term, 1875, of BERTIE Superior Court, before his Honor, Judge MOORE.

The facts pertinent to the points decided in this Court, together with the evidence relating thereto and the exceptions taken, are fully set forth in the opinion of Justice BYNUM.

His Honor, on the trial in the Court below, overruled the exceptions of the defendant in relation to rejection of certain evidence offered by him, and also the defendant's objection to the verdict as recorded. From the rulings of his Honor, the defendant appealed.

W. W. Peebles, for the defendant .

Attorney General Hargrove and Gilliam & Pruden, for the State .

BYNUM, J.

The defendant was indicted for the larceny of a leather trunk, the property of one W. J. Bishop. It was in proof that the trunk, when stolen in the month of October, 1874, contained one new fifty dollar bill of the Exchange National Bank, of Norfolk, Va.; that the prisoner had previously been in the service of the prosecutor, as a laborer on his farm, and had occasionally waited upon the office from which the trunk was stolen, and was familiar with the locality and with the habits of the prosecutor; that he was at the time in the service of one Capehart, a mile and a half distant, and very frequently visited the prosecutor's premises, on which his father and brother lived. In the month of December following the larceny, the prisoner passed to one Charles, for small bills, a new fifty dollar bill, of the same Exchange Bank of Norfolk, at the same time cautioning Charles not to use his name when passing off this bill, and that the prisoner left the county the next day for Raleigh. The evidence of the prisoner's acts and declarations as to the fifty dollar bill, was objected to by him, and constitutes his first exception.

*2 It was also proved by the State, that the prisoner had no means but his labor, and that he had received for his labor, in 1874, but about thirty dollars. This testimony was objected to by the prisoner, and its admission makes his second exception. The prisoner offered to prove that one Bryant, who, together with other laborers, worked on the prosecutor's farm at the time of the larceny, was familiar with the locality, and had waited upon ...