People v. Salorse

62 Cal. 139, 1882 Cal. LEXIS 709
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 21, 1882
DocketNo. 10,752
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 62 Cal. 139 (People v. Salorse) 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. Salorse, 62 Cal. 139, 1882 Cal. LEXIS 709 (Cal. 1882).

Opinion

McKee, J.:

This case arises out of an information against the defendant for embezzlement. Conviction followed the trial of the defendant, and on this appeal from the judgment and order denying his motion for a new trial, it is contended on his behalf, that the conviction is erroneous, because the offense committed, if any, was larceny, not embezzlement.

The evidence went to prove that the defendant in March, 1879, in the county of San Benito, hired a horse from its owner for a term of two months, and he agreed that he would use it exclusively in San Benito County, and redeliver it to the owner at the end of the term, and then pay for its hire. Under this contract the horse was delivered to the defendant, who used it for about a month in San Benito County, but after-wards—some time in April, 1879—he took the horse out of the county, without the consent of the owner, into the counties of Merced, Stanislaus; and San Joaquin, where he tried to dispose of it by sale or raffle, and he never returned the horse to its owner nor settled for its hire, but converted the same to his own use.

1. The proofs did not make out a case of larceny. Larceny is the felonious stealing, taking, carrying, or driving away the personal property of another. (P. C., § 484.) When the act of taking co-exists with a felonious intent to deprive the owner of his property, the offense is complete; hence, if at the time of receiving the horse from its owner the defendant had conceived the fraudulent intent to take it and convert it to his own use and to deprive the owner of it, and did, in fact, obtain the possession for that purpose, he would have been guilty of larceny, because the fraudulent receipt of the property of another, amounts in law to a taking without his consent. But here there was no charge against the defendant and no proof that the original taking was felonious. The [142]*142horse was intrusted to the defendant by the owner for a lawful purpose. There was nothing in the evidence which tended to prove that the defendant received it otherwise than for that purpose; therefore the delivery was such as to divest the owner of the possession of his horse and to vest it in the defendant, for the time expressed in their contract, to be restored at the end of that time to the owner in San Benito County. In taking the horse for that purpose, the defendant became bailee of it for the owner, and continued to hold it as such until he absconded from the county, taking the horse with him. That act, being in violation of his duty as bailee and connected with the fraudulent intent to appropriate the horse, and to deprive the owner of it, as the jury found by their verdict, constituted embezzlement and not larceny.

2. But it is also urged that if embezzlement, the conviction is erroneous, because the property stolen did not exceed fifty dollars in value; and as embezzlement is punishable as larceny, the offense was a misdemeanor, and the action was barred by the Statute of Limitations. If the offense was a misdemeanor it was barred, because the information was filed more than a year after its commission. (Pen. C., § 801,) But it was not a misdemeanor, unless the value of the. property stolen constituted an element in the offense. As to the fact of value there is no conflict in the evidence. The horse did not exceed in value fifty dollars, and, in ordinary cases, this would amount to petit larceny, and would be a misdemeanor. In such cases it is true, as a general rule, that the value of property stolen must be alleged and proved; but there are exceptions to the rule in favor of a particular species of property designated by the Legislature. Thus, grand larceny is defined to be " larceny committed of a horse, mare, gelding, cow, steer, bull, calf, mule, jack, jenny, goat, sheep, or hog.” (Pen. 0., § 487, subd. 3.) Any one of those enumerated animals is made by the law the subject of larceny or embezzlement without reference to its value. The law makes no distinction between grand and petit larceny as in the theft of other species of property. It fixes a definite punishment for the stealing of a horse, whether its value be five hundred dollars or only five dollars. The value of the horse was therefore not an ingredient of the offense of stealing the horse, [143]*143and it was not necessary to aver or prove its value; therefore, the instruction which the defendant requested to he given to the jury, to the effect that if the value of the horse did not exceed fifty dollars, and if the embezzlement of the horse took place more than a year prior to the filing of the complaint before the committing magistrate, they must acquit, was properly refused. (People v. Leehey, 4 Pac. C. L. J. 75.)

3. It is next assigned as error that the Court refused to give an instruction to the jury at the request of the defendant, to the effect that if the defendant, at the time of receiving the horse from its owner in the County of San Benito, intended to feloniously steal, convert, or appropriate it, they should acquit: and gave the following instruction, namely: “ If you believe, from the evidence, that the horse was given into the hands of defendant by the complaining witness, in the County of San Benito, and that it was afterwards taken by defendant into the counties of Merced, Fresno, or any other county than the county of San Benito, and by him in such county lost or converted to his own use, you can not convict, unless you also find that defendant, at the time of receiving the horse, intended to feloniously appropriate it to his own use.”

The first of these instructions was properly refused, because, as has been already stated, there was no evidence tending to show an appropriation by the defendant at the time of receiving the horse. The second of the instructions, as appears by the record, is marked, “ given with the words of qualification contained in the last part of the instruction.”

As it was originally presented, the instruction was not correct, because the point of law comprehended in it was not stated fairly and concisely. The fact that the horse might have been taken by defendant, and feloniously converted to his own use in any of the counties specified in the instruction, within five hundred yards of the County of San Benito, was ignored. A fraudulent appropriation of the horse in any of those counties, within the five-hundred-yard belt of the county in which the horse had been rightfully received, would have made the defendant guilty, and he was not entitled to acquittal. So that, instead of modifying the instruction, the Court should have refused it. But in modifying it, the Court, by

[144]*144its words of qualification, must have referred either to the appropriation of the horse within the five-hundred-yard belt between the County of San Benito and any of the outside counties specified in the original instruction as presented (because the Court had previously fully instructed the jury upon that point), or to the original taking in the county of San Benito. If to the former, the instruction, as qualified, was not erroneous; if to the latter, it was, like the preceding instruction, which the Court refused to give, inapplicable to the evidence in the case, and, for that reason, was not calculated to mislead the jury; and if erroneous, the error was not prejudicial, for it appears, by the record, that the law of the case, as it was submitted to the jury on the evidence, was fairly presented by the Court.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
62 Cal. 139, 1882 Cal. LEXIS 709, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-salorse-cal-1882.