State v. Holder

• Decision Date: 12 November 1924
• Docket Number: 421.
• Citation: 125 S.E. 113,188 N.C. 561
• Parties: STATE v. HOLDER ET AL.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

125 S.E. 113

188 N.C. 561

STATE v. HOLDER ET AL.

No. 421.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

November 12, 1924

Appeal from Superior Court, Richmond County; Shaw, Judge.

Junius Holder and another were convicted of larceny and of receiving stolen goods valued at more than $20, and they appeal. Affirmed.

Criminal prosecution, tried upon an indictment charging the defendants with larceny and with receiving stolen goods valued at more than $20. From an adverse verdict and judgment pronounced thereon, the defendants appeal, assigning errors.

W. R Jones, of Rockingham, for appellants.

Manning Atty. Gen., and Nash, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

STACY J.

The defendants, two white boys, 21 and 19 years of age respectively, who live in the country with their father about 10 miles south of Rockingham, N. C., were indicted at the April term, 1924, of the Superior Court for Richmond county, charged (1) with the larceny of certain personal effects of the value of more than $20, the property of Charles Bendscheller, and (2) with receiving said articles of personal property knowing them to have been feloniously stolen or taken. C. S. 4249 and 4250.

The prosecuting witness and a friend, tourists passing through the state in an automobile, had some road trouble, or their car was stuck in the mud not far from where the defendants live in Richmond county. This was on Sunday, April 6th, of the present year. The defendants, together with others who had collected on the road, helped the tourists pull their car out of the mire; and very soon after they had left, driving southward, an overcoat belonging to one of them, was discovered on the side of the road. Henry McGee, who was riding with the defendants in their father's Ford car said that the tourists would be back for it as soon as they discovered its loss, and in this he was correct; but one of the defendants picked up the coat, put it in their car, and took it away. Upon examination, they found in the pockets of the coat a pistol, a pocketbook, travelers' checks issued by the American Railway Express Company for $400, a fountain pen, a pencil and $7 in money. They divided the articles, burned the checks, and gave Sam Brady, a colored boy, $1 and told him not to say anything about the matter. They took the coat home, showed it to their mother and sisters, and told them about the men leaving it.

In a very short time the tourists returned to get the coat. Not finding it where it had been left, they informed the sheriff that it had been stolen, and in company with one of the sheriff's deputies, they went to the home of the defendants and there found the coat. It was hanging behind a door in one of the rooms where they were accustomed to hang their clothes. No search was made for the coat; the defendants' little sister brought it out from behind the door. The boys voluntarily gave it up. The defendants claimed at first that they did not know anything about the checks but later they admitted that they had destroyed them. There was evidence that they did not know what a check was. One of the boys could read and write; the other could not. Everything was returned to the prosecuting witness, except the travelers' checks, upon which he stopped payment, and his pistol valued at $9. There is nothing on the record to show what became of the pistol. The deputy sheriff testified that he found it...