State v. Clark

• Decision Date: 27 October 1909
• Citation: 122 N.W. 957,145 Iowa 731
• Parties: STATE v. CLARK.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

145 Iowa 731

122 N.W. 957

STATE

v.CLARK.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Oct. 27, 1909.

Appeal from District Court, Jefferson County; M. A. Roberts, Judge.

Indictment for grand larceny. Verdict and judgment of guilty. Defendant appeals. Reversed.Rollin J. Wilson and Leggett & McKemey, for appellant.

H. W. Byers, Atty. Gen., and C. W. Lyons, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

EVANS, C. J.

The defendant and Charles Clark, his brother, were indicted for the alleged larceny of 16 head of cattle. Fourteen of these cattle were the property of one Allen, and 2 of them were the property of one Walker. These cattle disappeared from the pastures of their owners on Sunday night, June 2, 1907. The theory of the state is that these cattle were taken by the defendants on Sunday night, and driven to Libertyville, 12 1/2 miles distant, and shipped to Chicago on Monday morning. The defendants were seen on the Sunday night, driving in the direction of this pasture with a team and buggy. A number of witnesses testified that late on Sunday night they separately met, on the road between the pasture and Libertyville, two men driving about this number of cattle in the general direction of Libertyville, and that one of the men was on foot, and the other was in a buggy driving a team. The testimony of these several witnesses related to different points in the route, and at different hours in the night. The last witness fixed the time at about 12:30 o'clock. The cattle were then being driven into the city limits of Libertyville. On Monday morning the defendant had 16 cattle in the stockyards at Libertyville, for which he had already engaged a car, and which he shipped to Chicago in the morning. He had come to the hotel at Libertyville at 1 o'clock in the morning. He was somewhat splashed with dirt, and said that he had walked in. There was evidence tending to identify by description some of the cattle in the stockyards on Monday morning, but there was no direct and positive identification of any of the cattle as being those of Allen or Walker. This is only a partial statement of the evidence, but it is sufficient to indicate its general nature and the theory of the prosecution. The contention of the state is that it proved that the cattle were stolen, and that it traced the same into the possession of the defendant, and that such possession, unexplained, was sufficient to warrant a verdict of guilty. It is urged on behalf of defendant that the state wholly failed to make a case, and that we ought to reverse the judgment for insufficiency of the evidence. Various other complaints are made, the chief of which is that the trial court failed to instruct the jury as fully as it ought on the subject of circumstantial evidence. This latter complaint will receive our first consideration.

1. As already indicated, the evidence offered by the state as tending to connect the defendant with the corpus delicti was wholly circumstantial. Counsel for defendant asked the court to give to the jury a general instruction on the subject of circumstantial evidence, and that it should instruct them that every fact necessary to a conviction must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. With such request counsel presented a formulated instruction, which the court refused. In State v. Blydenburg, 135 Iowa, 278, 112 N. W. 639, the following was held as a proper instruction in such a case: “To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence each fact in the chain of circumstances necessary to be established to prove the guilt of the accused must be proven by competent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and all the facts and circumstances necessary to prove guilt must be connected with each other, and with the main fact sought to be proved, and all the circumstances, taken together, must be of a conclusive nature, leading to a satisfactory conclusion, and producing a moral certainty that the crime charged was committed, and that the accused committed it. It is not sufficient that they coincide with and render probable the guilt of the accused, but they must exclude every other reasonable hypothesis.” We have considered much whether the instructions actually given by the court were not a fair compliance with this rule. The court did instruct that it was incumbent on the state to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the cattle, or some of them, were stolen. It also instructed that it was incumbent upon the state to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, defendant's possession of the stolen property. It also defined what was meant by circumstantial evidence, and that the circumstance proved must be inconsistent with any other rational conclusion than the guilt of the defendant. But it did not otherwise state the...