State v. Cameron
| Decision Date | 13 October 1943 |
| Docket Number | 220. |
| Citation | 27 S.E.2d 81,223 N.C. 449 |
| Parties | STATE v. CAMERON et al. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Criminal prosecution tried upon indictment charging defendants, in two counts, (1) with the larceny of a bicycle of value less than twenty dollars, the property of H.L Clark, and (2) with receiving said bicycle, knowing it to have been feloniously stolen, taken and carried away contrary to the form of the statute, etc.
In the trial court evidence for the State as disclosed in the record on this appeal tends to show these facts: On August 18, 1942 about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, while H.L. Clark was moving, and on his way from Jacksonville to Greensboro, in this State, in a pick-up truck and trailer, with a bicycle owned by him tied on top of the load on the truck, and after passing through and beyond Sanford westwardly on the Boone Trail, a tire on the trailer blew out at the farm of G.L Stroupe, making it necessary to have repairs made to the tire. He put the truck "under the shed or barn on the Stroupe place",--the big green barn on the left side of the highway, in which barn fodder and hay were stored. The bicycle "was taken off that night"; "it had been roped down". Clark told Stroupe about it, and he reported it to the officers. Clark next saw and identified the bicycle in June, 1943, about two months after the sheriff and a patrolman had found it, on Saturday night, April 3 1943, about 10:15 o'clock, in possession of defendants as they were tying it on the front bumper of a Ford coach parked on the right side of the highway about 150 feet beyond the barn from Sanford. Both tires of the bicycle were flat. It was "real dusty". Between the spokes there were small pieces of hay and fodder--blades of fodder hung in the spokes. The Sheriff and the patrolman chanced to pass along the highway a few minutes before and saw the parked Ford coach. In it there was a negro woman whom they later ascertained to be the wife of defendant LeRoy Cameron. She told them that the driver "got out and left the car and she didn't know where he was gone". The officers rode up the road two or three miles and came back, and finding the defendants there in the dark with the bicycle as above stated, they got out and interrogated defendants about where they got the bicycle. They made contradictory statements in the course of questioning by the officer. Defendant LeRoy Cameron first said that the bicycle belonged to his brother Robert, Jr., who was at home, when in fact Robert, Jr., was present; that Robert "had left it there for him to pick up"; and that he, LeRoy, "got it right up here above the road in the bushes". Thereupon, at the request of the sheriff, LeRoy went with him to show him where he, LeRoy, found the bicycle--beside a fence that came down just about where the car was parked--an open spot--hard ground, little grass--with small cedar trees--but no fodder and no "marking" there. Defendant LeRoy Cameron also told the officers that the bicycle belonged to his brother Arthur who got it up at John Hubbard's home,--out of the barn,--and brought it down that afternoon on a truck and put it out there that night and had sent him, LeRoy, to get it,--that "his brother told him to come out and get it".
The next day Arthur Cameron, brother of defendants, took the patrolman and showed him "where he left the bicycle". The place he showed was about 200 yards from where LeRoy Cameron took the sheriff the night before.
John Hubbard, as witness for the State, testified that while there were barns on the Tomberlin place on which he lived in a rented house, he did not farm, and did not rent or have a barn; that Arthur Cameron did not get the bicycle from him; and that he never saw it until it was shown in court.
The defendant Robert Cameron, Jr., was not heard by the officers to say anything when LeRoy Cameron said in his presence that the bicycle belonged to his brother, Robert, Jr., but later stated to the officers that the bicycle did not belong to him and that he had never seen it before.
While there is evidence that Arthur Cameron lived, and was tenant on the Stroupe farm until "last Fall", and that the defendants and their mother lived on the place at one time several years ago, the evidence is that the defendants now live "on a place *** five or six miles from the Stroupe place".
G.L Stroupe, as witness for the State, testified that defendants had worked for him off and on many different times, and that the other brother Arthur was working there all the time; that LeRoy had worked for him in the "brick at New River" and...
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State v. Braxton
... ... to find that the taking, if any, was with a felonious intent ... We do not so construe it. But on the contrary, we think the ... instruction gave the essential elements of larceny which ... constitute a felonious intent. State v. Massengill, ... 228 N.C. 612, 46 S.E.2d 713; State v. Cameron, 223 ... N.C. 449, 27 S.E.2d 81; State v. Epps, 223 N.C. 741, ... 28 S.E.2d 219; State v. Holder, 188 N.C. 561, 125 ... S.E.2d 113; 52 C.J.S., Larceny, s 25, page 817 et seq ... Moreover, the Court had defined larceny to be 'the ... felonious or criminal taking and carrying away of the ... ...
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