State v. Fuselier
| Decision Date | 02 February 1914 |
| Docket Number | 20,383 |
| Citation | 134 La. 632,64 So. 493 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. FUSELIER |
Rehearing Denied March 2, 1914
(Syllabus by the Court.)
'Burglary and larceny' may be treated as a single crime, and so charged in an indictment, and, where this is done, the court may charge the jury that it can bring in either a verdict of guilty or not guilty, and need not charge the jury that it may bring in one of the two above-mentioned verdicts or a verdict of 'guilty of larceny.'
E. B Dubuisson, of Opelousas, for appellant.
R. G. Pleasant, Atty. Gen., and R. Lee Garland, Dist. Atty., of Opelousas (G. A. Gondran, of Donaldsonville, of counsel), for the State.
PROVOSTY, J., being absent on account of illness, takes no part.
The defendant was found guilty of burglary and larceny, and sentenced for a term of two years at hard labor in the penitentiary.
On the trial the judge, in instructing the jury, informed them as part of his charge that they could find one of two verdicts, viz.: Guilty or not guilty.
Thereupon counsel representing the accused requested the court to charge that the jury could find the defendant guilty as charged, or guilty of larceny, or not guilty.
The trial judge refused to change his charge as requested by counsel for defendant, and cited State v. Heloise Carriere, 127 La. 1030, 54 So. 339, in support of his ruling. The defendant thereupon excepted to the charge on this particular point.
There is unavoidably similarity between the charging part of the indictment in the decision before cited and that in the indictment in the present case.
The two crimes denounced are practically the same.
No question but that the rulings in the cited case and the present case are absolutely similar to all intents and purposes.
The only possibility of a change would be by recalling and setting aside the former decision as a precedent which has heretofore received the unanimous approval of the court.
The question arises: Is the question of sufficient importance or has such a departure been made as to require the overruling the prior decree?
We are not of that opinion.
The question here has several times received consideration directly, and in some cases the principles here have been touched upon; although they are not directly in point, they establish the correctness of the position in the cited cases.
There is no necessity of retracing steps on this question in jurisprudence, nor of setting aside decisions. This court is committed to the proposition that the act denounced here is denounced as one crime, indictable in one count.
It was said in the case of the State v. Thomas, 28 La.Ann. 171, that the charge is not objectionable that confines the possibility of finding the accused guilty of one crime. The court, in the last-cited case, laid down the rule that the charge was not prejudicial; but it also found in effect that the instruction could be limited to one crime, that is, to burglary, and not to two, burglary and larceny.
In State v. Johnson, 34 La.Ann. 49, in which the defendant was charged with entering and stealing, the court held that the offense...
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State v. Hataway
...v. Nicholls, 37 La.Ann. 779; State v. Robertson, 48 La.Ann. 1026, 20 So. 167; State v. Carriere, 127 La. 1029, 54 So. 339; State v. Fuselier, 134 La. 632, 64 So. 493. There was one decision to the contrary. That was in v. Morgan, 39 La.Ann. 214, 1 So. 456. In that case the accused, being in......
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...was not valid. And the ruling in that case was repeated in State v. Carriere, 127 La. 1029, 54 So. 339, and again in State v. Fuselier, 134 La. 632, 64 So. 493. State v. Malloy, 30 La.Ann. 61, and in State v. Depass, 31 La.Ann. 487, the ruling was that, under an indictment for burglary and ......
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