United States v. Adcock, 21465.

• Decision Date: 30 March 1943
• Docket Number: No. 21465.,21465.
• Citation: 49 F. Supp. 351
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. ADCOCK.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Kentucky

49 F. Supp. 351

UNITED STATES v. ADCOCK.

No. 21465.

District Court, W. D. Kentucky, at Louisville.

March 30, 1943.

Eli H. Brown, III, U. S. Atty., of Louisville, Ky., for plaintiff.

Brent Overstreet, of Louisville, Ky., for defendant.

MILLER, District Judge.

The defendant, James Clifton Adcock, was indicted for knowingly transporting a stolen automobile in interstate commerce in violation of Section 408, Title 18 U.S.C.A. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and the matter is before the Court on the defendant's motion for a new trial.

The defendant had been employed for a number of months by the Briggs Motor Company as manager of its used-car lot in Portsmouth, Virginia. Following a disagreement with Briggs in the latter part of October 1941 he was released from employment and paid in full on a Saturday afternoon. The next day he called Briggs on the phone and asked permission to use one of the automobiles for the purpose of going to Suffolk, Virginia, to collect some of his personal belongings. The permission was given and Adcock took the car in question and drove it to Suffolk. He tried to locate his former wife from whom he had been recently divorced but was not able to find her. He took a few drinks and decided to keep on riding and to seek employment at some Army camp in another section of the country. He drove the car on into North Carolina and from there through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and into Kentucky. While in Tennessee he acquired some secondhand Tennessee license plates and installed them on the care in place of the Virginia license plates which he removed. He was arrested in Kentucky for using the car as a taxicab without a license. He abandoned the car in Kentucky and proceeded into New York state. At the close of the Government's case, which showed the foregoing facts, the defendant moved for a directed verdict on the ground that the evidence was not sufficient to show that the car was a stolen car within the provisions of the statute. The motion was overruled, which ruling is the basis for the present motion.

Section 408, Title 18 U.S.C.A. provides: "Whoever shall transport or cause to be transported in interstate or foreign commerce a motor vehicle, knowing the same to have been stolen, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by imprisonment of not more than five years, or both." Defendant contends that where a bailee obtains possession of property without fraudulent intent at the time and later uses the property in violation of the terms of the bailment, the property so used is not stolen property; that the felonious intent to appropriate property to one's own use must exist at the time of obtaining possession of the property in order to make the property stolen property. He relies upon Smith v. Commonwealth, 96 Ky. 85, 27 S.W. 852, 49 Am.St.Rep. 287; Morgan v. Commonwealth, 242 Ky. 713, 47 S.W.2d 543, and McKenzie v. Travelers' Fire Ins. Co., 239 Ky. 227, 231, 39 S.W.2d 239 in support of his contention. The first two of those decisions deal with the crime of larceny and state the general common law rule that when property comes lawfully into the possession of a person, either as agent, bailee, part owner or otherwise, his subsequent appropriation of it is not larceny, unless the intent to appropriate it existed in the mind of the taker at the time it came into his hands. But this is not an indictment for larceny, and unless the word "stolen" in the statute is used synonymously with the crime of larceny the rule is not applicable. In United States v....