State v. Griffin, 507
| Decision Date | 16 December 1953 |
| Docket Number | No. 507,507 |
| Citation | 239 N.C. 41,79 S.E.2d 230 |
| Parties | STATE, v. GRIFFIN. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., and Claude L. Love, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Basil M. Boyd and J. Frank Flowers, Charlotte, for defendant, appellant.
The defendant in each of four instances was convicted of both larceny by trick and embezzlement with respect to the same transaction. He was found guilty of taking, stealing and carrying away the personal goods of L. N. Stallworth, and on the same testimony found guilty of fraudulently and feloniously converting to his own use the same property with which, according to the bill for embezzlement, he had been previously entrusted as agent, consignee, clerk, employee and servant of L. N. Stallworth.
The defendant moved that the solicitor be required to elect for which of these offenses the defendant should be put on trial.
While there is similarity in some respects between larceny and embezzlement, they are distinct offenses. Larceny is a common law offense not defined by statute; while embezzlement is a criminal offense created by statute to cover fraudulent acts which did not contain all the elements of larceny. 21 Henry VII C. 7; G.S. § 14-90.
Generally speaking, to constitute larceny there must be a wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal property of another without his consent, and this must be done with felonious intent; that is, with intent to deprive the owner of his property and to appropriate it to the taker's use fraudulently. It involves a trespass either actual or constructive. The taker must have had the intent to steal at the time he unlawfully takes the property from the owner's possession by an act of trespass. Actual trespass, however, is not a necessary element when possession of the property is fraudulently obtained by some trick or artifice. The embezzlement statute makes criminal the fraudulent conversion of personal property by one occuping some position of trust or some fiduciary relationship as specified in the statute. The person accused must have been entrusted with and received into his possession lawfully the personal property of another, and thereafter with felonious intent must have fraudulently converted the property to his own use. Trespass is not a necessary element. In embezzlement the possession of the property is acquired lawfully by virtue of the fiduciary relationship and thereafter the felonious intent and fraudulent conversion enter in to make the act of appropriation a crime. State v. McDonald, 133 N.C. 680, 45 S.E. 582; State v. Ruffin, 164 N.C. 416, 79 S.E. 417, 47 L.R.A.,N.S., 852; State v. Holder, 188 N.C. 561, 125 S.E. 113; State v. Cameron, 223 N.C. 449, 27 S.E.2d 81; State v. Finnegean, 127 Iowa 286, 103 N.W. 155; Blackett v. People, 98 Colo. 7, 52 P.2d 389; 18 A.J. 572; 32 A.J. 892, 914; 22 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 290, page 436; 2 Burdick Law of Crime 339.
In the case at bar, according to the State's evidence, the defendant obtained the property of the witness Stallworth by a trick or fraudulent device. While in a sense it was with his consent, it was only by this trick or fraudulent device that the taking was accomplished, constituting in legal effect a constructive trespass. And the felonious intent necessary to constitute the crime of larceny must have been present and motivating the act at the time of the taking. To constitute embezzlement the defendant must have been the agent, employee or servant of Stallworth and as such entrusted by Stallworth with possession of Stallworth's property for Stallworth, and the defendant must have thereafter fraudulently and with felonious intent converted the property to his own use. Conceding, without deciding, that the evidence is susceptible of either view, it is apparent that both views could not exist at the same time. The defendant could not be guilty of both by the same act. Hence we think the defendant's motion that the solicitor be required to elect whether the defendant put to trial for larceny or embezzlement should have been allowed.
However, it appears that the able judge who presided at the trial of this case was careful to impose on the defendant sentences carrying penalty or punishment only in the cases in which the jury had convicted him of larceny by trick. All the sentences for embezzlement were made to run concurrently with the sentences for larceny. So that the defendant will suffer nothing by reason of the several convictions for embezzlement; nor does it appear that the imposition of the term of 3 to 5 years in prison for all the eight cases was in any respect augmented by the verdicts in those cases. After all it was the same evidence whether tending to show larceny or embezzlement. Hence it would appear that the defendant has no cause for complaint that the ...
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