State v. Hutchison
| Decision Date | 16 May 1913 |
| Citation | 121 Minn. 405,141 N.W. 483 |
| Parties | STATE v. HUTCHISON. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Steele County; Arthur B. Childress, Judge.
Glen Hutchison was convicted of grand larceny. From an order denying a new trial, he appeals. Reversed.
Defendant was convicted of grand larceny in the first degree, mainly on evidence of his recent possession of the stolen property. It is held there was no burden on defendant to explain his possession of the stolen property. Certain instructions to the jury considered, and held erroneous and prejudicial, as tending to convey the idea that a conviction was justified, unless the jury believed defendant's explanation to be a reasonable one and true.
Evidence of good character goes to the probabilities, and bears on the general question of guilt or innocence. An instruction in this case that confined the consideration of such evidence to the question of the reasonableness of defendant's explanation, and to his credibility as a witness, was erroneous, but whether prejudicial is not decided.
Defendant's guilt was not conclusively proved, and it therefore does not appear that the errors in the instructions may not have influenced the result. T. S. Stevens, of Hamburg, Iowa, and W. A. Sperry, of Owatonna, for appellant.
Lyndon A. Smith, Atty. Gen., Alexander L. Janes, Asst. Atty. Gen., and F. A. Alexander, of Owatonna, for the State.
Defendant was convicted in the district court of Steele county of grand larceny in the first degree, and appeals from an order denying a new trial. The facts disclosed by the evidence were substantially as follows:
Between the hours of 1 and 2 o'clock on the morning of August 8, 1912, a plate glass window in the front of a jewelry store in Owatonna was broken, and a number of watches taken. Between 6 and 7 o'clock in the evening of the same day, defendant offered to sell a watch to a jeweler in Rochester, which watch was in defendant's possession and was identified as one of the watches taken from the Owatonna store. Defendant told the Rochester jeweler that the watch had been given to him by his sister, and that he was working for a farmer some six miles south of the city, whose name he did not know. Later in the same evening defendant was arrested. He at first denied having any watches in his possession, but finally produced and delivered to the sheriff the watches that had been taken from the store window of the Owatonna jeweler in the early morning of the same day. He told the sheriff that he purchased the watches for $50 from a stranger while standing at the railway station in Owatonna. Defendant had no money in his possession when he was searched, but did have a monkey wrench and a cord. During the afternoon of the day before the watches were taken, the defendant was seen to pass the store several times and to look into the window. This was in substance the state's case.
Defendant testified in his own behalf, adhering to his story that he had purchased the watches from the stranger at the Owatonna station, and denying his guilt. He admitted that he told the Rochester jeweler that his sister had given him the watch he was trying to sell, and that this was not true. In addition to defendant's testimony, there was evidence tending to show that defendant might have had money in his possession, and rather strong evidence that he was a boy of very good habits and character.
The main reliance of defendant's counsel on this appeal is the claim that there were errors in the charge that entitled defendant to a new trial. The trial court in its charge, after defining the crime and detailing the facts of the breaking into the store, the taking of the watches by somebody, and the finding of the property in defendant's possession, said:
‘If these facts were undisputed, and if there was no reasonable explanation of why this property was in the possession of defendant, then I think that a verdict of guilty by the jury would be justified by such evidence; that is, I mean to say, that if what I have just stated is unexplained by some reasonable explanation, that is, the fact that the store was broken into and the goods were in the possession of defendant the next day, and he offered no reasonable explanation of why those goods were in his possession, and you should return a verdict of guilty, I should say that that verdict might be justified...
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- State v. Kelly
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State v. Kelly
...in junk yards (People v. Cannon, 139 N.Y. 32, 34 N.E. 759, 36 Am.St.Rep. 668); stolen property or other fruits of crime. State v. Hutchison, 121 Minn. 405, 141 N.W. 483. In each of these cases there is a logical inference to be drawn from While we cannot subscribe to the view that all statu......
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State v. Wofford
...In considering whether prejudicial errors occurring at the trial may have affected its outcome, we said in State v. Hutchison, 121 Minn. 405, 409, 141 N.W. 483, 484: '* * * But to reach the conclusions that the errors were without prejudice we must hold that the guilt of defendant was concl......
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State v. Shetsky
...that whatever remarks were made are not prejudicial, violates his right to a trial by an impartial jury. See, State v. Hutchison, 121 Minn. 405, 409, 141 N.W. 483, 484. Because of the constitutional guarantee of an impartial jury trial, the rule in civil cases that if the evidence is conclu......