Turner v. United States

• Decision Date: 06 December 1926
• Docket Number: No. 4496.,4496.
• Parties: TURNER v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

57 App. DC 39, 16 F.2d 535 (1926)

TURNER v. UNITED STATES.

No. 4496.

Court of Appeals of District of Columbia.

Submitted November 3, 1926.

Decided December 6, 1926.

D. T. Wright and Philip Ershler, both of Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Peyton Gordon and George D. Horning, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Washington, D. C., for the United States.

Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, ROBB, Associate Justice, and BARBER, Judge of the United States Court of Customs Appeals.

MARTIN, Chief Justice.

The appellant was convicted and sentenced upon an indictment charging the crime of robbery. The statute against robbery in the District of Columbia reads as follows:

"Whoever by force or violence, whether against resistance or by sudden or stealthy seizure or snatching, or by putting in fear, shall take from the person or immediate actual possession of another anything of value is guilty of robbery, and any person convicted thereof shall suffer imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than fifteen years." Code D. C., § 810.

The indictment charged that the defendant on the 15th day of September, 1925, at the District of Columbia, "by force and violence, and by sudden and stealthy seizure and snatching, and against resistance, and by putting in fear, feloniously did steal, take, and carry away from and off the person of George A. Darrell, then and there being, twenty-one dollars in lawful money of the United States of America, of the value of twenty-one dollars, of money and property of the said George A. Darrell, against the form of the statute," etc.

The defendant moved to quash the indictment upon the grounds, first, that there was a misjoinder of distinct offenses in a single count; second, that the two alleged offenses were joined in a single count to the prejudice of the defendant; and, third, that the indictment was contradictory, redundant and repugnant.

The lower court overruled this motion, and we think its decision was correct. The applicable rule is thus stated with authorities in 31 Corpus Juris, 764:

"It is a well-settled rule of criminal pleading that, when an offense against a criminal statute may be committed in one or more of several ways, the indictment or information may, in a single count, charge its commission in any or all of the ways specified in the statute. So, where a penal statute mentions several acts disjunctively, and prescribes that each shall constitute the same offense and be subject to the same punishment, an indictment or information may charge any or all of such acts conjunctively as constituting a single offense."

It was held by this court in O'Brien v. United States, 27 App. D. C. 263, that under Code D. C. § 834, which describes two classes of acts, either one of which constitutes embezzlement, an indictment charging the commission of both of such acts is not bad for duplicity, and a conviction is warranted upon proof of the commission of either of the acts, citing Gassenheimer v. United States, 26 App. D. C. 432; 1 Bishop, New Crim. Proc. §§ 436, 586. See Connors v. United States, 158 U. S. 408, 15 S. Ct. 951, 39 L. Ed. 1033.

The conviction rested upon proof that the defendant had stealthily stolen Darrell's pocketbook containing $21 in money from out of...