The State v. Long
| Decision Date | 04 November 1885 |
| Docket Number | 12,420 |
| Citation | 3 N.E. 169,103 Ind. 481 |
| Parties | The State v. Long |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Wayne Circuit Court.
The appeal is sustained, at the costs of the appellee.
F. T Hord, Attorney General, and J. F. Robbins, for the State.
Josiah C. Long was indicted, tried and acquitted in the court below for obtaining, as was charged, the loan of $ 100 from one Caleb W. Price by false pretences.
This appeal is prosecuted by the State under sections 1845, 1846 1882 and 1883, R. S. 1881, for the review of certain questions reserved at the trial.
The indictment charged that, on the 6th day of February, 1884 the appellee, for the purpose of obtaining a loan of $ 100 from the said Caleb W. Price, feloniously, knowingly and designedly made divers and certain false representations to him, amongst which were that he, the appellee, was then and there the owner of $ 5,000 worth of stock in the Ezra Smith & Co. Manufacturing Association, a corporation doing a large and extensive business in the city of Richmond, in this State, the stock in which was worth seventy cents on the dollar, thereby intending to induce him, the said Price, to believe that he, the appellee, held and owned said stock, free from any pledge, security, lien, debt or encumbrance, and also that he, the appellee, was at the time solvent and able to pay all his debts which did not then exceed the aggregate sum of $ 300. Whereas, in truth and in fact, he, the appellee, was not, at the time, the owner of $ 5,000 worth of stock in said Ezra Smith & Co. Manufacturing Association, and was not the holder of such stock free from any pledge, security, lien, debt or encumbrance, but all of his stock in said association was then pledged and deposited as collateral security for the payment of certain debts which he then owed as follows: Forty shares to one Thompson to secure the payment of $ 700; thirty shares to one Graves to secure the payment of $ 775, and twenty-seven shares to Susan Githens to secure the payment of $ 500; and whereas, in truth and in fact, he, the appellee, at the time owed large sums of money, to wit, to one Graves $ 1,500; to one Thompson $ 700; to the First National Bank of Richmond $ 650; to one Brown $ 219; to one Vanzandt $ 600; to one Binkley $ 75; to one Smith $ 50; to Susan Githens $ 700, and to one Bellinger $ 50, making a total aggregate indebtedness of $ 4,579, and then owed other debts the amounts of which and the persons to whom they were due were to the grand jurors unknown.
After evidence had been introduced tending to prove that the defendant had, at the time specified, made representations to Price similar to those charged in the indictment, Susan Githens was called as a witness on behalf of the State, and testified that, at the time named, the defendant was indebted to her in the sum of $ 700. The prosecuting attorney then proposed to prove by the witness that when the representations alleged to be false were made, all the stock of the defendant in the Ezra Smith & Company Manufacturing Association was pledged and hypothecated to, and deposited with, her as security for an indebtedness to her exceeding the value of the stock, which indebtedness was then past due and remained wholly unpaid, but the circuit court excluded the proof thus proposed to be made, and the prosecuting attorney reserved a question for decision by this court upon that ruling of the circuit court.
This ruling was based upon the ground that the indictment did not charge ...
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