State v. Laughlin

• Decision Date: 30 June 1862
• Citation: 8 Jones 455,53 N.C. 455
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. LAUGHLIN, a slave.

8 Jones (NC) 455

53 N.C. 455

STATE

v.LAUGHLIN, a slave.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

June Term, 1862.

A house seventeen feet long and twelve wide, setting on blocks in a stable yard, having two rooms in it--one quite small, used for storing nubbins and refuse-corn to be first fed to the stock, and the other used for storing peas, oats and other products of the farm, is not a barn within the meaning of the statute, Rev. Code, chap. 34, sec. 2, the burning of which is made a felony.

INDICTMENT for ARSON, tried before HOWARD, J., at the Fall Term, 1861, of Robeson Superior Court.

The indictment charged the defendant with burning a barn, then having corn in the same. The jury found a special verdict as follows, to wit: “That the prisoner did burn, as charged in the bill of indictment, a house, sitting on blocks, built of logs and roofed in, with good floor, and door fastened with padlock, seventeen feet long by twelve feet wide, with two rooms, one about three times as large as the other--the small room used for storing the nubbins or refuse corn, to be first fed away to the stock, and at the time of the fire, containing five or six bushels; the other used for storing the peas, oats or other products of the farm, and containing, at the time of the fire, twenty or thirty bushels of peas, some fodder and other things; the said house being situate in the stable lot, twenty-seven feet from the stable, with two similarly built houses in the same lot, just back of it--one smaller, used in storing the good corn raised on the farm, and the other, the seed cotton, and say, if the Court should be of opinion that the said house was a barn, then they find the prisoner guilty of the arson and felony as charged, otherwise not guilty.”

The Court remarked, in giving his judgment in the case, “the statute is highly penal and must be strictly construed; the purpose of the act was to preserve the crops of corn and grain; the house must be a barn, used in part for storing corn or grain, and must have therein, at the burning, the corn or grain, for the storing of which it is used. Peas are not grain. Did the fact, then, that the refuse corn was placed therein, to be first fed to the stock, make it a barn for storing corn. The witnesses speak of it--some as a barn, others, a waste-house. The statute being highly penal, the punishment the severest known to our law, the Court holds that it is not clearly within the purview of the act. It is, therefore, adjudged that the prisoner be released:” from which judgment the solicitor prayed an appeal to the Supreme Court, which was granted.

Attorney General and Winston, Sr., for the State .

Shepherd, for the defendant .

BATTLE, J.

When this case was before the Court at June Term, 1861, one of the questions presented was, whether a building, properly called a barn, was the same with one properly called a crib, and it was decided that it was not, and that, therefore, an indictment for arson, in burning a barn, with grain in it, could not be supported by proof that the building burnt, was a crib with grain in it. Upon the new trial, which took place in consequence of that decision, a special verdict was rendered, in which the building was particularly and minutely described, and it was submitted to the Court to decide whether it was a barn or not, within the meaning of the statute. So, that upon the present appeal, that is the only question presented to us.

Arson, at common law, is defined by Lord COKE to be “the malicious and voluntary burning the house of...