Smith v. State

59 Ohio St. (N.S.) 350
Ohio Supreme Court·Decided December 13, 1898·Published

Opinion

Williams, J.

The indictment on which the plaintiff in error was put upon trial contained two counts, one of which charged her jointly with her husband J. C. Smith, Maggie Gaw and Sarah Leuzler, with the larceny of the property in question, and the other count charged that she, with the persons named, did unlawfully and fraudulently buy, receive, and conceal the property, knowing that it had been stolen. The plaintiff in error, .on her demand, was given a separate trial, in the course of which the state abandoned the count for larceny, and the ease then proceeded on the other count. The property embraced in that count consisted of dry goods, shoes, jewelry, and other articles of merchandise which belonged to, and had been stolen from different merchants in the city of Sandusky. That count describes the various articles of stolen property, alleges their value, names the respective owners, and charges that all of the property was bought, received, and concealed by the parties accused, on the seventeenth day of May, 1897. In the count for the larceny there is the same description of the property and allegations of ownership and value, and the larceny is laid on the same day. A motion to quash each count for duplicity was overruled; and that action of the court is made a ground of error here, the claim being that, as the property of different [358]*358owners was included in each count, there were as many offenses charged as there were owners of property.

While it is true that the stealing from different owners at different times, however slight the interval, constitute several offenses, a larceny of several articles may be committed by the same act, so as to constitute but one offense, though they are the property of different owners. State v. Hennessey, 23 Ohio St., 339. And so with respect to receiving or concealing stolen property. Many articles stolen at different times from several persons may be received and concealed by the same act, and then there is but one offense. A motion to quash lies only when the objection is apparent on the face of the record; Revised Statutes, section 7249. And as the indictment in the one count avers that all the property described was stolen, and in the other received and concealed, by the accused parties on the same day, it may be treated as charging but one criminal act in each count. It does not affirmatively appear that more than one offense is charged in either count, and the motion was therefore properly overruled.

The evidence tended to prove that some of the goods had been stolen from the stores of the several owners in Sandusky before the day laid in the indictment, and were found on that day in the house where the plaintiff in error resided with her husband, which was in the country some miles distant from Sandusky. It further tended to prove that the plaintiff in error had been in the habit of visiting these stores, where she carried on a species of theft commonly known as shoplifting, and on some occasions was accompanied by her co-defendant Leuzler who engaged in a like mode [359]*359of stealing; and the two, when together, acted in concert. We have discovered nothing in the evidence to show that any goods stolen by either were delivered to the other. On the day named in the indictment the plaintiff in error and Mrs. Leuzler went together to Sandusky where they visited several stores, from some of which each stole different articles. They were suspected, accused of the thefts, confessed their guilt and put under arrest. The property that day stolen was recovered, and an officer sent to search the houses where the women resided, which were in the same neighborhood, but some distance apart. A considerable quantity of goods of various kinds was found in each house, which the evidence tended to show had been stolen from the different owners named in the indictment, and from their respective places of business, in the manner already stated. All of these goods, together with those stolen on the seventeenth day of May, 1897, were included in each count of the indictment, and their aggregate value laid at two hundred and forty dollars. The court directed the jury, in case they should return a verdict of guilty, to find the value of only so much of the property described in the indictment as had been found in the house of the plaintiff in error, and of that stolen on the seventeenth day of May, 1897, and to exclude all that had been found in Leuzler’s house; and also to return a special verdict showing the value of each item included in the general verdict, and the name of its owner. That was done; the value returned in the general verdict being sixty-five dollars, and the special verdict showing the value of each item of the property, and the name of its owner. The value of no single article [360]*360amounts to thirty-five dollars, and the aggregate value of all the items of but one owner .equals that sum.

Upon the conclusion of the testimony the defendant, by her counsel, presented the following written instruction which the court was requested to give in charge to the jury: “You must first find from the evidence that a crime has been committed — that the goods alleged in the indictment or some of them were stolen from the owner or owners; and in so finding the jury must take into consideratidn all of the evidence submitted; and having found that a larceny was committed you will find from the testimony that some one other than the defendant here on trial stole the goods, before you can find that she can be guilty of buying, receiving and concealing the same; for if she alone shall have stolen the goods, she cannot be guilty as charged under this indictment of buying, receiving and concealing the same, for the statute comprehends that the buying or receiving and the subsequent concealing to have been from some one who is the thief, and not a receiving from the thief by the thief; the statute contemplates at least two persons in such transactions.” This instruction was refused, and an exception duly entered. Several other instructions on the same subject were requested, all of which, like this one, made the receiving of the stolen property from the thief essential to a conviction. At the request of the state’s attorney the jury were instructed as follows: “If you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the goods or a part of them were stolen and that the defendant not only received the stolen goods or a part of them knowing them to be stolen goods, but also assisted in stealing them, or a part [361]*361of them, she may still be convicted provided some other person or persons assisted in the theft of each piece so received or concealed.” The defendant excepted to this charge.

The crime of larceny is defined, and its punishment prescribed, by section 6856, of the Revised Statutes. And, by section 6858, the buying, receiving and concealing of stolen property, is made a distinctive and substantive offense, separate from that of the larceny of the property, though it is punished in the same way. The offense at common law was limited to the buying or receiving of stolen property; and the thief could not be convicted of that offense, because he could neither be the buyer or receiver of the property from himself, and therefore did not come within the description. The change made by our statute consists in the addition of concealment of stolen property, with guilty knowledge, to the criminal acts of buying and receiving it.

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Smith v. State, 59 Ohio St. (N.S.) 350 (Ohio 1898).

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