State v. O'Clair

292 A.2d 186, 1972 Me. LEXIS 305
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedJune 14, 1972
StatusPublished
Cited by48 cases

This text of 292 A.2d 186 (State v. O'Clair) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. O'Clair, 292 A.2d 186, 1972 Me. LEXIS 305 (Me. 1972).

Opinion

DUFRESNE, Chief Justice.

On October 3, 1968 Fred O’Clair, the appellant, was indicted under 17 M.R.S.A. § *189 754 for the crime of breaking and entering, with intent to commit larceny, the building of Standard Auto Parts, Inc. situated at Waterville, Maine. Tried before a Ken-nebec County jury on June 30, 1969, he was found guilty as charged and sentenced on July 2, 1969 to a term in Maine State Prison of not less than 2% years and not more than 5 years. He appeals to this Court from the judgment of conviction and from the subsequent denial of his motion for a new trial grounded on newly discovered evidence. The appeal is denied.

The appellant’s threshold attack was directed against the indictment under Rule 12 of the Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure. He seasonably moved to dismiss the charge, claiming the indictment was fatally defective in that it failed to state facts constituting a criminal offense and, couched as it was in the words of the statute, it did not apprise him with reasonable certainty of the nature of the accusation against him.

The indictment reads in pertinent part as follows:

“The Grand Jury Charges: That Fred O’Clair of Winslow in the County of Kennebec and State of Maine, on or about the eighteenth day of February A. D. 1968, at Waterville, in said County of Kennebec, in the night time of said day did break and enter the building of the Standard Auto Parts, Inc., a corporation, being a place where valuable things were then and there kept, with intent to steal, take and carry away and permanently deprive the Standard Auto Parts, Inc., a corporation, of its property.”

The appellant first challenges the sufficiency of the description of the accused, where the indictment merely identifies the indicted person as Fred O’Clair of Winslow in the County of Kennebec and State of Maine, whereas the evidence does reveal that the appellant has a son bearing the same name who, prior to the finding of the indictment, was arrested on the warrant then pending for the arrest of Fred O’Clair. The evidence is clear that this arrest was made by an officer who had no knowledge of the facts upon a misdirection from police headquarters and that it was brought about by the appellant himself who told the arresting officer when being arrested on the warrant that the wanted man was his son. An accused is entitled to have an indictment describe him by his full and correct name. It is only when his full and correct name is unknown that further particulars of identity such as physical characteristics, sex, occupation, place of residence, or other details of identification must of necessity be alleged. See, State v. Striar, 1922, 121 Me. 519, 118 A. 377.

The appellant does not dispute that the instant indictment carried his full and correct name. Under such circumstances, his constitutional right to be protected against an unreasonable seizure (Constitution of Maine, Article I, § 5) or a vague accusation (Article I, § 6) is complied with since the use of his full and correct name should usually enable the officer to apprehend the proper person and the accused to maintain a plea of former jeopardy if, after conviction or acquittal, a second charge for the same offense is brought against him. The indictment on its face described the person of the appellant with exactitude and is not rendered deficient in matter of substance by reason of the plurality of persons of the same name. The issue then becomes one of identification at trial and from the evidence the jury was justified in finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant was one of the burglars, if not the only one, involved in the burglary at the Standard Auto Parts, Inc.

The appellant’s second charge upon the sufficiency of the indictment focusses upon the lack of particulars respecting the intended loot. He contends that the description of the statutory intent to commit larceny (in the instant case — a necessary ingredient of the crime of burglary under 17 M.R.S.A. § 754) is in such broad terms *190 (with intent to steal, take and carry away and permanently deprive the Standard Auto Parts Inc., a corporation, of its property) that it does not apprise him of the charge he has to answer with that degree of specificity as will satisfy the mandates of our State and Federal Constitutions.

In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have a right to demand the nature and cause of the accusation. Constitution of Maine, Article I § 6; Amendment VI to the Constitution of the United States. The general rule is that these constitutional requirements are satisfied when the indictment contains such plain, concise and definite allegations of the essential facts constituting the intended offense as shall adequately apprise an accused of reasonable and normal intelligence of the criminal act charged and the nature thereof, sufficiently enabling him to defend and, upon conviction or acquittal, to make use of the judgment as a basis of a plea of former jeopardy, should the occasion arise. State v. Charette, 1963, 159 Me. 124, 188 A.2d 898; State v. Chick, 1970, Me., 263 A.2d 71, 75.

The appellant’s claim that a valid indictment charging the crime of breaking and entering a building in which valuable things are kept with intent to commit a larceny therein under 17 M.R.S.A. § 754 must describe the intended larceny with that degree of particularity as is necessary in an indictment for the specific offense of larceny itself to the extent of describing the goods intended to be stolen, was fully rejected in Lumsden v. State, 1970, Me., 267 A.2d 649. The averment of an intent to steal goods or property in general terms is sufficient. We repeat what we said in Lumsden, supra, at page 652:

“As a practical matter, it would appear that in many cases of breaking and entering with intent to steal, the specific intent of the prospective thief at the time of the breaking and entering exists only in general terms of stealing something inside, with no particular thought given to the specific article to be stolen or whose property will be taken. It is equally a crime to break and enter with intent to steal something as it is with intent to steal the money, if any, in the cash register. To require more particularity in the description of the intent with which a burglar enters a building than to identify in general terms the ultimate intended offense would so weaken the legislative enactment as to make it practically useless in cases where the ultimate crime was not committed and there was no further proof of acts tending to particularize objectively the undisclosed original intent of the wrongdoer.”

The appellant lastly presses his claim for dismissal of the indictment on the ground he was denied due process of law by reason of the State’s failure to afford him a speedy trial as necessitated by Article I, § 6 of the Constitution of Maine and the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth. A person accused of crime is entitled to a discharge or dismissal, if his constitutional right to a speedy trial is violated, and a motion addressed to the court at which the indictment is pending is a proper vehicle for raising such issue. Rule 48(b) M.R. Crim.P. O’Clair’s claim of violation of due process is without merit.

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Bluebook (online)
292 A.2d 186, 1972 Me. LEXIS 305, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-oclair-me-1972.