Mann v. Commonwealth

80 S.W. 438, 118 Ky. 67, 1904 Ky. LEXIS 4
Court of Appeals of Kentucky·Decided April 29, 1904·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

Opinion of the court by

JUDGE HOBSON

Affirming.

Appellants, Thomas Mann and Edward Morris, were indicted and convicted of burglary, their punishment being fixed at confinement in [he penitentiary for ten years. The proof shows that they, in company with one Charles Sanders, went from Maysville in a buggy abo,ut ten miles to the house of John B. Farrow, or near it, and there tied their horse, and after entering the house through the window, in the night time, proceeded to rob Farrow by taking some money that was in his pants pocket. Some noise they made waked up Mrs. Farrow, who roused her husband, and thereupon the defendants or one of them, shot Farrow in the arm, and also in the back. The same grand jury that found the indictment for burglary also found an indictment against them for shooting Farrow, and on this last' indictment they were tried and convicted. Mann appealed to this court, and that judgment was affirmed. Mann v. Commonwealth, 25 R., 1964; ■79 S. W., 280. When arraigned on the charge of burglary, they pleaded the conviction under the indictment for the shooting of Farrow, in bar of the proceeding.

While the indictment on the charge of burglary contains some unnecessary averments as to the larceny committed by them after they entered the house, it is a charge only of burglary, the allegations’ as to the stealing of the money by putting Farrow in fear and shooting him being apparently only added to illustrate the felonious intent with which the defendants entered the house as charged in the indictment. The -burglary was complete when the felonious entry was made, and the defendants might have been indicted and con[70] victed therefor,, although they had stolen nothing in the house, or committed no other crime after they entered it. The allegations, therefore, of the indictment, as to what they did after they entered the house, are surplusage, although the facts so alleged might be properly given in evidence before the jury, on the trial, to show the intent with which the entry was made. These averments are simply statements of evidential matter, which should have been omitted from the indictment.

Burglary is defined as “the breaking and entering in the night of another’s dwelling house, with intent to commit a felony therein.” 1 Bishop on Criminal Law, sec. 559. “If a man. in the night time breaks into a dwelling house, intending to commit therein some act which in the law is felony, he is guilty of burglary, whether he succeeds in doing what he meant or not.” 1 Bishop on Criminal Law, sec. 437. It is insisted, however, for appellants that the defendants entered the house to- steal the money, and that the entry of the house, the stealing of the money, and the shooting of Farrow were all one transaction, done in pursuance of one intent, and that out of it the Commonwealth can not carve two offenses. In support of this view we are referred to a number of authorities. Thus in Fisher v. Commonwealth, 64 Ky., 211; 89 Am. Dec., 620, where the defendant by the same act and with the same intent took a horse, wagon, and harness, it was held that an acquittal of stealing the horse was a bar to an indictment for the stealing of the wagon and harness, and the rule was applied that out of one transaction committed with the same intent two offenses could not be carved. The same rule was applied in Triplett v. Commonwealth, 84 Ky., 193; 1 S. W., 84, where an acquittal of the offense of burglary was held a bar to a prosecution for a larceny forming part of the [71] same transaction. The court said: “At common law, in an indictment for burglary, a count might be added for the larceny when there had been an actual taking, and it therefore resulted that an acquittal of the burglary with intent to steal constituted no bar to a prosecution for the actual theft. .Without the intention to commit a felony, the mere fact of breaking would not, at common law, constitute a burglary; and when the intent to steal is charged and the party acquitted, it would seem that a subsequent indictment for grand larceny,, with the same facts developed on the trial, .would be placing the accused in jeopardy the second time for the same offense. The weight of authority, we are aware, is adverse to such a view of the question, but the whole reason and philosophy of the law, as well as justice to the accused, require a different ruling.”

In Herera v. State (Tex. Or. App.) 84 S. W., 948, it was held by the Texas court that a conviction for assault with intent to kill was a bar to an indictment for robbery committed in the same transaction. But none of these cases are precisely in point here. It is misleading to say that the shooting of Farrow and the burglarious entry of the house were committed in the same transaction, in the sense in which this term is used by the authorities. See 1 Bishop on ■Criminal Law, sec. 1060. Thus in the Fisher case the one act of the defendant was the taking of the horse, wagon, and harness; but here there were two acts of the defendant —the burglarious entry of the house and the shooting of Farrow in the house after this act had terminated ¡These are no more one transaction than if the defendants had successively shot two different persons in the same difficulty. The shooting of Farrow could not have been set out in a second part of the indictment for burglary, or joined with that charge. The robbery of the person by put[72] ting him in fear was not complete before the assault with intent to kill was committed; ,so, therefore, neither the Triplett case nor the Herera case applies. In the case before us the entry into the house was for the purpose of theft. The shooting of Farrow came aboitt because he waked up, and was nothing more than a new offense which the commission of the offense intended induced the defendants to commit. It is no more one transaction than it would be if the defendants had set fire to the house, after robbing it, to conceal the evidence of their crime, or had shot Farrow’s son as they escaped, to prevent his being a witness against them.

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Mann v. Commonwealth, 80 S.W. 438, 118 Ky. 67, 1904 Ky. LEXIS 4 (Ky. Ct. App. 1904).

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