State v. Crabbe
| Decision Date | 25 June 1925 |
| Docket Number | 36855 |
| Citation | 204 N.W. 272,200 Iowa 317 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, Appellee, v. GEORGE CRABBE, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Des Moines District Court.--OSCAR HALE, Judge.
DEFENDANT was convicted of larceny of a Ford automobile and sentenced accordingly. He appeals.
Reversed.
Seerley & Clark, for appellant.
Ben J Gibson, Attorney-general, and W. E. Jackson, County Attorney for appellee.
The evidence of the State tends to show that, on April 16, 1923, one H. J. Carlson, in the city of Burlington, Iowa, drove his Ford coupe to the Mercy hospital, where he parked the same, and that, after a visit to the hospital, he returned for his car, and it was gone. It was found about the first of May, in Galesburg, Illinois, in the possession of police officers. The number had been changed, and it had no license plates. It had been found by the officers in the possession of the defendant, who gave various inconsistent explanations of how he came into possession of it.
In the trial of the case, the State was permitted, over the objections of the defendant, to introduce the testimony of the sheriff of Des Moines County as to a conversation had in the spring of 1923 about certain license plates. The sheriff was permitted to testify that the defendant told him that he transferred a car to Gus Feldman, who purchased a new set of plates, and that the car had never been fetched to Iowa; and that the sheriff found certain license plates at Feldman's. He identified certain registration cards from the treasurer's office in Burlington, which defendant told him had been turned into the treasurer's office for new license plates, and testified that these were the license plates found in Gus Feldman's residence. Such registration card and license plates were then, against the objection of the defendant, admitted in evidence. The sheriff says he never saw the car called for by the exhibits, but that the defendant told him that the car had been stolen in Chicago. The admission of this testimony is urged upon us as a serious error. When it is remembered that this defendant is before the court charged with the larceny of this Ford automobile, it takes an unreasonable stretch of the imagination to see why this testimony was admitted. There is no claim that the license plates found at Gus Feldman's were ever on the car in controversy or had anything to do with the car. The Illinois certificate that was turned into the office of the treasurer of Des Moines County shows an entirely different engine number from the one in controversy herein.
Our attention is called to the case of State v. Albery, 197 Iowa 538, 197 N.W. 650; but the facts in that case are wholly distinguishable from those in the case at bar. The charge there was receiving stolen property, which involves elements wholly wanting in the present case. That case involved a question of a conspiracy and a general course of conduct between the parties for disposing of stolen cars and the issuance of license plates and registration certificates in different counties as an element of the system or scheme by which they disguised and covered up their nefarious transactions, and was admitted by the court as tending to show knowledge on the part of the appellant that the cars in question were stolen....
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