State v. Broderick
| Decision Date | 22 April 1889 |
| Citation | 17 A. 716,61 Vt. 421 |
| Parties | STATE v. EDWARD BRODERICK |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
FEBRUARY TERM, 1889.
Exceptions sustained, verdict set aside, and case remanded for new trial.
W H. Bliss, for the respondent.
To rebut any presumption that the respondent was fleeing with stolen goods, and as a part of the res gestae to characterize his and Kelley's trip, the respondent offered to show by Barnes, that when the latter left the others, to return with the team, the respondent and Kelley quarreled, and that Kelley found fault because he had paid the respondent for carrying him to the lake, and insisted that he should do it.
As the possession of stolen goods is a fact from which complicity in the larceny of them may be inferred, all the circumstances attending the possession and explanatory of it may be shown. But the fact that Kelley and the respondent quarreled would not have shed any light upon the character of the possession of the blanket, and so was properly excluded.
What Kelley said about his having paid the respondent to carry him to the lake was not competent, as it was mere narrative of a past transaction. And what he said by way of insisting that he should carry him is no better, as it was but another way of saying that he had agreed to do it.
This indictment is founded on s. 4141 of the statute, which makes it a State's prison offense to steal clothing, cloth, yarn, or wool, exposed for drying or bleaching, or clothing, blankets, or robes, used or placed for use in travelling in a vessel, car, or vehicle "although the value of the property does not exceed seven dollars." Section 4137 prescribes the same penalty for larceny generally, "if the money or other property exceeds seven dollars in value." By s 4138, stealing is petit larceny only, "if the money or other property stolen does not exceed seven dollars in value."
It is contended that s. 4141 does not embrace cases of stealing property of less than seven dollars in value, but only cases of property of that value or more; and that this statute, being penal and in derogation of the common law, should be most strictly construed, if necessary to that interpretation.
The rule that such statutes are to be strictly construed, has come to mean that they, like all other statutes, are to be fairly construed according to the legislative intention courts refusing on the one hand to extend them to cases not...
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