People v. Prather

66 P. 483, 134 Cal. 386, 1901 Cal. LEXIS 781
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 25, 1901
DocketCrim. No. 773.
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 66 P. 483 (People v. Prather) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California 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. Prather, 66 P. 483, 134 Cal. 386, 1901 Cal. LEXIS 781 (Cal. 1901).

Opinions

GAROUTTE, J.

William H. Prather has been convicted of the crime of grand larceny, and appeals from the judgment rendered against him. The attention of the court will be directed first to a consideration of the sufficiency of the information.

Section 786 of the Penal Code provides: “ When property taken in one county by burglary, robbery, larceny, or embezzlement, has been brought into another, the jurisdiction of the offense is in either county.” The present prosecution is based upon the provisions of the aforesaid section of the code, the subject-matter of the larceny being forty-eight sacks of buckwheat, charged to have been stolen in the county of Yolo by defendants, and thereafter brought by them into the county of Sacramento. That portion of the information to which our attention will be directed is as follows: “The said William H. Prather and Charles Davis, on the - day of March, A. D. *387 1900, at the said county of Sacramento, in- the said state of California, and before the filing of this information, did then and there willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously steal, take, and carry away from A. D. Miller and Adolph Jean," in the county of Yolo, in the state of California, forty-eight'sacks of buckwheat, then and there the personal property of the said A. D. Miller and Adolph Jean, and said personal property being then and there of the value of one hundred dollars, in lawful money of the United States of America; that after such unlawful and felonious stealing, taking, and carrying away as aforesaid, the said defendants did then and there bring said personal property, so taken, stolen, and carried away as aforesaid, into the said county of Sacramento, in the state of California.” In the first part of this information, it is charged that the defendants, at the county of Sacramento, did take, steal, and carry away from Miller and Jean, in the county of Yolo, this buckwheat. We are at a loss to see how it could be done. It would seem to be a physical impossibility for these defendants, at the county of Sacramento, to steal this buckwheat in the county of Yolo. But no demurrer was interposed upon this ground, and this defect in the information is not fatal to the pleading. After the information alleges the property to have been stolen in Yolo County, it alleges that the defendants did “bring said personal property, so taken, stolen, and carried away as aforesaid, into the county of Sacramento.” This part of the information is the vital part of it, so far as the county of Sacramento is concerned, for in this language must be found sufficient to give the superior court of Sacramento County jurisdiction of the offense. If the court did not gain jurisdiction of the offense by this language, it had no jurisdiction whatever to try these defendants.

Mr. Bishop, in his work on New Criminal Procedure (vol. 1, sec. 59), says: “ Though, to constitute larceny, a taking and carrying away of the goods by trespass and an intent to steal' them must concur, if, after one has taken what completes the theft; he continues traveling away with and still intending to steal them, each step may be treated as a new trespass and fresh larceny; so that he may be indicted either in the county where he first took the goods, or in any other into which, the intent to steal continuing, he carries them. ... It is immaterial to this result whether the taking to the new county is immediate, or long after the original theft. But it must be *388 felonious in the new county,—as, for example,” etc. This principle of law is elementary, and involves the proposition that a new larceny is committed in every county to which the thief takes the property; and the correct information in such a case should charge the commission of the crime of larceny in the county where the person is to be prosecuted. Under such circumstances, the first larceny is a mere matter of evidence, and should not be alleged. (People v. Mellon, 40 Cal. 648, 654; People v. Scott, 74 Cal. 94.)

The principle of law illustrated by the quotation from Mr. Bishop is wholly different from the principle of law laid down by the section of the Penal Code quoted. That section does not attempt to create either a new or a different crime. It refers entirely to the place of trial of certain crimes. Its sole purpose and effect is to give jurisdiction of certain offenses to the courts of certain counties, which otherwise had no jurisdiction of those offenses. When the property stolen is taken by the-thief into another county, instanter the courts of that county have jurisdiction to prosecute the thief,—not for some new offense, but for the offense originally committed, whether that crime be larceny, robbery, burglary, or embezzlement. This is-the plain meaning of the section. It is apparent that such is its meaning; for it would be impossible to charge a burglary or robbery, or possibly an embezzlement, in another county than that in which it was committed. (People v. Scott, 74 Cal. 94.) It not being possible to charge such offenses in the second county, it is plain that it is the original offense which may be tried in another county,” and the information, after alleging the commission of the crime in the first county, should then allege the jurisdictional fact that the property was thereafter-brought by the thief into the county where the information is-filed. This being the proper form of the pleading, it follows that it is unnecessary to allege a taking in the second county,, or the value of the property in that county, or that the property was feloniously taken into the county. The statute does, not demand that any of these conditions should exist, and therefore it is unnecessary to allege them. In People v. Scott, 74 Cal. 94, — a case of burglary prosecuted in the county to which the stolen goods were taken,—the court said: “ These considerations go to the jurisdiction of the court, and not to the form of charging the facts constituting the offense, and are referred *389 to only for the purpose of showing that, except as provided by statute, crime is regarded as local.”

It is claimed that the taking into the second county should be charged in the information as a felonious taking; for the rule of law being that all presumptions should be resolved in favor of a defendant’s innocence, it must be presumed that the taking into the second county was an innocent taking, the pleading not stating to the contrary; and counsel says, perchance the owner, after the commission of the crime in the first county, vested title in the stolen goods in the thief before they were taken by him to the second county. State v. Brown, 8 Nev. 208, appears to be in line with these suggestions. That case seems to hold that, under a statute similar to the one here quoted, the offense should be charged as having been committed in the county where the information is filed. This we deem to be a mistaken view of the statute, for, as already suggested, such allegations could not be made in cases of burglary and robbery, and in construing this section, all of the crimes named therein stand upon common ground. In the leading case of Haskins v. People, 16 N. Y. 344, 350, which is quoted with approval in the Nevada case, this question is made very plain.

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Bluebook (online)
66 P. 483, 134 Cal. 386, 1901 Cal. LEXIS 781, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-prather-cal-1901.