Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 01 November 1898
• Citation: 40 Fla. 480,25 So. 143
• Parties: WILLIAMS v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

25 So. 143

40 Fla. 480

WILLIAMS v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

November 1, 1898

Error to circuit court, De Soto county; Barron Phillips, Judge.

Andrew J. Williams was convicted of larceny, and he brings error. Reversed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

The following instruction in a trial for larceny of cattle 'That when a man is found in possession of stolen cattle with the mark or brand changed into his, or with his mark or brand on the cattle, in the absence of a reasonable and credible explanation of those facts you may infer that he stole them,'--held to be erroneous: First, because of its omission of the legal requirement that the possession must be of goods recently stolen, in order that an inference of guilt from such possession may be drawn; second, because it requires a reasonable and credible explanation from the suspected possessor, not only of his possession thereof, but of an alteration of the distinguishing marks and brands on the property, before such explanation is permitted to clear him of the charge of larceny thereof. The settled rule is that the possession of stolen goods must be recent after their loss, in order to impute guilt. The presumption of guilt, in larceny, that the law permits a jury to draw, as a matter of fact, from the unexplained possession of property recently stolen, grows out of, and rests solely upon, the unexplained possession thereof, and not upon any alterations or mutations to which the property may have been subjected while in the defendant's possession, or before it reached his possession; and, to acquit the accused of the charge of larceny when there is no other evidence of guilt than that of the possession of recently stolen goods, the law only requires from him a prompt, reasonable, and credible explanation of his possession thereof.

COUNSEL Wilson & Wilson, for plaintiff in error.

William B. Lamar, Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

TAYLOR C.J.

The plaintiff in error was convicted at the spring term, 1898, of the circuit court of De Soto county, of the crime of larceny of cattle, and from the sentence imposed seeks relief here by writ of error.

At the trial the judge, among other things, instructed the jury as follows: 'That when a man is found in possession of stolen cattle, with the mark or brand changed into his, or with his mark or brand on the cattle, in the absence of a reasonable and credible explanation of those facts, you may infer that he stole them.' This charge was duly excepted to, and is assigned as error. The giving of this instruction was error. It erroneously states the law as to the presumption of guilt, in cases of larceny, that may be drawn from the unexplained possession of goods recently stolen, in that it omits that feature of the rule that requires the possession to have been 'recent' after the theft before it can be relied upon as a basis for the presumption of guilt. In the exhaustively considered case of State v Hodge, 50 N.H. 510, in which it is clearly demonstrated that the presumption of...