People v. Goodman

119 N.E. 429, 283 Ill. 414
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedApril 17, 1918
DocketDocket No. 11836
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 119 N.E. 429 (People v. Goodman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Goodman, 119 N.E. 429, 283 Ill. 414 (Ill. 1918).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Duncan

delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiffs in error, Louis Goodman and Max Goodman, brothers, were indicted jointly with Ike Kaminsky, Meyer Mendelson, Morris Mendelson, Morris Kleiman, Harry Green and Nathan Steinberg, at the July term, 1916, of the criminal court of Cook county, on four counts. The first count charged the larceny of one hundred and sixty-six suits of the value of $15 a suit, and seven hundred yards of woolen goods of the value of $2 a yard, the personal goods and property of Max Mantynband. The second count charged the buying and receiving said suits and goods of said values by the defendants knowing the same to have been feloniously stolen, etc. The third and fourth counts charged the defendants with the burglary of the store of Max Mantynband with intent said personal goods and chattels of Mantynband in said store situated feloniously and burglariously to steal, take and carry away, contrary to the statute, etc. Morris Mendelson was granted a separate trial on his motion, and afterwards the indictment was as to him stricken from the docket with leave to re-instate, on motion of the State. Meyer Mendelson pleaded guilty to the charge of burglary. Pleas of not guilty were entered and motions for separate trials were made by each of the defendants Kaminsky, Kleiman, Green and plaintiffs in error, which were overruled by the court. On the trial at the Juné term, 1917, of said court Kaminsky consented to testify for the State, and the indictment was dismissed as to him on motion by the State. After the State had presented its evidence counsel for plaintiffs in error moved the court to require the State to elect on which count it would proceed against them. The motion was denied as to Louis Goodman and granted as to Max Goodman, and the State elected to proceed against the latter on the count for receiving stolen goods. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against the four defendants tried, finding Kleiman and Green guilty of burglary and larceny and plaintiffs in error guilty of receiving stolen goods knowing the same to be stolen. Motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment were filed and overruled, and all four of the defendants on September 15, 1917, were sentenced by the court to serve an indeterminate sentence in the penitentiary at Joliet. Louis and Max Goodman have brought a transcript of the record to this court and have sued out writs of error for a review of the judgment.

The evidence discloses that on the night of Sunday, March 12, 1916, the clothing store of Max Mantynband, at ■657 West Twelfth street, Chicago, between DesPlaines and Union streets, was burglarized and one hundred and sixty-six suits of men’s clothing and fourteen bolts of goods, of the total value of from $5000 to $6000, were stolen and carried away. The next morning Mantynband discovered the burglary and larceny and reported the same to the police. On the morning of March 14 or 15 Morris Kleiman and another man called on George Sproul, a teaming contractor in Chicago, and asked him for a wagon to haul some goods from an old barn at or near the corner of Polk and Sholto streets. Sproul sent a wagon in charge of Harry Nord after the goods. Plalf an hour later Nord returned with the goods boxed up in three large wooden crates or boxes, and Sproul made out a bill of lading for them from B. David to L. Goodman, Essex, Illinois, and delivered it to Meyer Mendelson. The boxes of goods were marked in ink, “From B. David to L. Goodman, Essex, Illinois.” Sproul became suspicious that the goods were stolen and communicated with the detectives of the Cartage Exchange. Later, with detective Flynn and two police officers, he went to the freight yards of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, where Nord had been directed by the parties in charge of the goods at the barn to deliver them., and found the boxes in'a freight car and opened them. Mantynband was sent for and identified all of the goods as his goods that had been stolen from his store. Several officers, with detective Flynn and Sproul, then went to the old barn where the thieves had stored the goods, and found burglars’ tools, an iron saw, a steel chisel, a hammer, a jimmy, a crow-bar and a piece of rope in a manger or stall and covered with hay. Mantynband replevined and recovered all of his goods except a few suits and some of the cloth stolen, of the total value of about $200.

The foregoing facts are not controverted, and the evidence clearly established beyond any doubt that the parties who burglarized the store and stole the goods were the parties named in the indictment, Kaminsky, Kleiman, Green, Steinberg and the two Mendelsons. It is just as clearly shown by the evidence that plaintiff in error Max Goodman took no part in the burglary and larceny and knew nothing about the store being burglarized and the goods being stolen until about two or three or more days after such burglary and theft. One of the contentions of plaintiffs in error is that the evidence does not prove beyond all reasonable doubt that either of them was guilty of the burglary or the felonious stealing or carrying away of said goods, and that there was no evidence whatever of such guilt on the part of Max Goodman, and that it is improper and erroneous, under such circumstances, to join burglary and receiving stolen goods knowing them to be stolen, in the same indictment, where there is no charge or evidence of conspiracy or common design leading both to the burglary and to the receiving of the stolen goods.

It has been frequently held by this court that burglary and receiving stolen goods may be joined in one indictment against one or several defendants, and that the indictment may not be quashed or successfully attacked by a demurrer merely because of the fact that they are different and distinct crimes, committed at different times or on different days. (Bennett v. People, 96 Ill. 602; People v. Moeller, 260 id. 375.) A defendant may be an accessory before the fact to a burglary and larceny by having advised and encouraged the burglary and larceny, and he may also be guilty of buying and receiving the same goods- so stolen knowing the same to have been stolen. In such a case he may be properly indicted for all three of said offenses and convicted of any one of them. (People v. Thompson, 274 Ill. 214.) Louis Goodman, according to the evidence of Kaminsky, selected the store of Mantynband as the store the six burglars should burglarize and located for them in that store the goods to be stolen, because he had a grudge against Mantynband and because the goods were good and salable goods that he could sell to advantage. The facts, if communicated to the State in advance of the indictment, warranted the State’s attorney in having him indicted and in insisting that he be tried with the six burglars. Whether or not he was prejudiced by having been tried with the burglars is another question, depending on the facts proven, and the same is true as to Max Goodman. But so far as the rule is concerned as to the indictment, it is general and to the effect that all the guilty parties may be indicted in one or in several counts, all charging burglary, larceny and receiving stolen goods knowing them to be stolen, and it is not subject to a successful attack by a demurrer, motion to quash or in arrest of judgment, merely because it may appear during the trial or after verdict that a defendant 01-defendants were only guilty of receiving stolen goods knowing them to be stolen.

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Bluebook (online)
119 N.E. 429, 283 Ill. 414, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-goodman-ill-1918.