State v. Gargare

• Citation: 95 A. 625
• Decision Date: 19 October 1915
• Docket Number: No. 109.,109.
• Parties: STATE v. GARGARE.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

95 A. 625

STATE

v. GARGARE.

No. 109.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Oct. 19, 1915.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

John Gargare was convicted of receiving stolen goods. From a judgment in the Supreme Court, affirming the conviction, he appeals. Affirmed.

The per curiam opinion in the Supreme Court was as follows:

The defendant in this case was convicted of the crime of receiving stolen goods, viz., a Ford automobile, belonging to Herbert I. Davis. The case comes up under the 136th section of the Criminal Procedure Act.

The first contention is that there was error in the refusal of the motion to quash. The only ground upon which the motion was based was that the indictment failed to state that the automobile was of any value. This was not a good ground to quash, for, under the thirty-third section of the Criminal Procedure Act, an indictment is not to be held insufficient for want of such a statement.

Put, even if the ground suggested to the trial court had been sound, the refusal to quash would not justify a reversal of this judgment, for that is a matter in the discretion of the court; and as it is not a part of the proceedings at the trial (but a matter antedating those proceedings) it docs not come within the purview of the 136th section of the Criminal Procedure Act.

It is next contended that the plaintiff in error was not guilty of the offense of receiving stolen goods in the county of Ocean, because he was a principal in the larceny, which occurred in the city of New York, and that his only offense, therefore, was triable in another jurisdiction. The answer to this contention is that the defendant was not guilty of larceny in New York, under the law as laid down by this court in the case of State v. Wyckoff, 31 N. J. Law, 65.

It is next contended that it was improper for the trial court to admit testimony showing other stealings of automobiles, not only by the party guilty of the theft in the present case, but by others, all of them at the instigation of the plaintiff in error, and all of the stolen automobiles delivered to him subsequently in Ocean county. The testimony was properly admitted under the case of State v. Popick, 83 N. J. Law, 318 .

Next it was claimed that there was error in the following instructions to the jury: "If you find the circumstances of that purchase, or getting, on the part of the defendant were such as to lead a rational man, a man of ordinary caution and intelligence, to be put on his inquiry, and...