Wolf v. State
| Decision Date | 13 May 1926 |
| Docket Number | No. 24966.,24966. |
| Citation | 151 N.E. 731,198 Ind. 261 |
| Parties | WOLF v. STATE. |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Delaware Circuit Court; Clarence W. Dearth, Judge.
Charles Wolf was convicted of destroying, removing, covering, altering, and defacing an engine number on an automobile, and having caused those things to be done, and he appeals. Affirmed.Jno. J. O'Neill, of Muncie, Eichhorn, Gordon & Edris, of Bluffton, and Moran & Gillespie, of Portland, for appellant.
Arthur L. Gilliom, Atty. Gen., and Edward J. Lennon, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., for the State.
Appellant was charged by affidavit in one count with unlawfully and feloniously having destroyed, removed, covered, altered, and defaced an engine number on an automobile, and in a second count with unlawfully and feloniously having caused those things to be done, at Delaware county in the state of Indiana. He was found guilty on both counts, and judgment was rendered that he be imprisoned for not less than 2, nor more than 14, years, and pay a fine of $100. The only error relied on is overruling appellant's motion for a new trial under which counsel insist there was no evidence to prove that the alleged change of the engine number was made by appellant, nor that it was made in Delaware county, Indiana; that two of the instructions given by the court were erroneous; and that certain evidence was improperly excluded.
[1] There was evidence that on December 24, 1923, the defendant bought from a dealer in Muncie a 1920 Ford sedan car, bearing the motor engine number “4344303”; that on January 1, 1924, he obtained from the secretary of state an automobile license and certificate of registration for a car bearing that engine number, and license plates numbered “13-130”; that on the evening of January 8, 1924, a 1922 Ford sedan car, the engine of which bore the number “5684732,” was stolen from where it was parked on a street in Wabash, Ind.; that early in January, 1924, not long after the Christmas holidays, the 1920 Ford sedan bearing the engine number 4344303 was taken to a public garage in the town of Eaton, in Delaware county, Indiana, and, pursuant to an order by defendant, the body and top were taken off and put on another car which belonged to defendant's brother-in-law, to whom defendant had sold them; that on the evening of January 18, 1924, defendant was driving the stolen automobile on a street in Muncie; that the engine number-5684732-had been filed off or otherwise removed, and the number “4344303” had been cut into the engine block, and the car was carrying the license plates with the number “13-130,” and also the “Indiana motor vehicle certificate of registration,” which had been issued to defendant on January 1, 1924, for use on a Ford sedan car bearing the engine number 4344303; and that the chassis, without any body thereon, of the car which originally had borne that number, which defendant had owned when this license and certificate of registration were issued, was then in a private garage in the town of Eaton, still bearing the engine number 4344303, where the workmen at the public garage, who dismantled it at defendant's direction, had put it after taking off the body and top; and that the chassis of the car which originally bore the number 4344303, that defendant had owned when he took out the license, was in such a condition that it could not be run on its own power. There was also evidence that on the day of the trial, by the application of heat from an acetylene torch, and of acid, the figures “56847 2” were made to come out on the engine block of the stolen car found in defendant's possession, witnesses testifying that the next to the last figure in the number where the blank space is left was so mutilated in cutting a new number in the block that it could not be made out. But the stolen car was identified by many other marks made on it and changes which it had undergone during the two years that the owner had it before it was stolen. It was also proved that the registration certificate for the car bearing the engine number 4344303 named defendant as the owner, and gave his address as Muncie, Ind., at a street number not to be found in Muncie, being the street and number at which his uncle lived in Hartford City. The evidence introduced by the defense was testimony to the effect that the defendant had purchased a Ford sedan car at Chicago 6 days after the car was stolen at Wabash, being 4 days before he was found driving it in Muncie, at which time the car he purchased had no number on the engine block, and that defendant furnished the number of his old car to be put on the engine block of the car he was purchasing, and it was cut thereon by somebody in Chicago before the purchase money was paid, though nobody identified the car found in defendant's possession as the same one he purchased in Chicago, except as an inference of identity might arise from the fact that it bore the same engine number.
The jury were justified in drawing the inference from this evidence, which they did draw, that the defendant removed the old engine number from the stolen car, and caused it to be removed, and that he did this in Delaware county, in the state of Indiana. The verdict was supported by sufficient evidence, and was not contrary to law.
The trial court gave 30 instructions asked by the defendant. These instructions declared the law applicable to every phase of the case as strongly in defendant's favor as a liberal construction of the law would permit, to say the least. The presumption of innocence which attends a defendant was declared nine times, with strong emphasis, and with direct application to the facts in evidence. The necessity of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict him was directly declared in emphatic terms 18 times, and indirectly several times additional. The proposition that, if there...
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