State v. Weinberg

150 S.W. 1069, 245 Mo. 564, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 256
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedNovember 13, 1912
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 150 S.W. 1069 (State v. Weinberg) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Weinberg, 150 S.W. 1069, 245 Mo. 564, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 256 (Mo. 1912).

Opinion

KENNISH, J.

— Appellant, Morris "Weinberg, and his son, Julius Weinberg, were jointly prosecuted by information in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis, charged with grand larceny in the first count, and with the felony of receiving stolen goods, knowing the same to be stolen, in the second count. Upon a trial appellant was convicted under the second count and his punishment assessed at a term of two years in the penitentiary. From the judgment entered he appealed to this court. ITis- codefendant, Julius Weinberg, was acquitted.

The property described in each count of the information was the same, to-wit, one man’s black overcoat with muskrat collar, the property of the Stix, Baer & Fuller Dry Goods Company, of the value of $87.50.

The evidence for the State tended to prove these facts, namely: Stix, Baer & Fuller Dry Goods Company, a corporation known as the Grand Leader, is engaged in the retail clothing business in the city of St. Louis, and about the middle of October, 1910, re[569]*569ceived from the city of New York a consignment of eleven high-priced overcoats. One of these coats was missed from the stock on the 29th day of November, 1910, and several others were missing within a few days thereafter. Detectives were employed to locate the missing garments. On December 12 one of the coats was found at Dunn’s pawnshop in said city, where a few days before it had been pawned for thirty dollars by a person giving his name as Condon. On the said 12th d- of December appellant’s son, Julius Weinberg, called at the said pawnshop, having the ticket issued to Condon for the coat, and offered to Redeem it, saying a friend of his in the hotel had asked him to get it for him. A detective named Usher working on the case came into the pawnshop at the time, and young Weinberg, in answer to an inquiry, stated to Usher that he got the ticket that morning from a man named King, who called at their store, but that he did not know where he was at that time. Usher then went to appellant’s place of business and appellant told him he got the ticket two weeks before from a man supposed to be stopping at the Laclede Hotel, just across the street from appellant’s place of business. Appellant was asked by Usher if he had any more such tickets or fur-lined overcoats and answered that he had not. On December 28, 1910, the black overcoat with the muskrat collar, described in the information, was found in a pawnshop conducted in said city by a man named Chiswell. This coat had been pawned a week before by a bartender who had recently purchased it from a man named Fischer, who in turn had purchased it from appellant on November 22, 1910', as shown by a written receipt for the purchase price which was introduced in evidence. When the possession of this coat was traced to appellant he was asked if he had sold it to Fischer. He first said he -could not recall it, but later said he had. Two detectives then went to appellant’s home and found there, apparently [570]*570concealed, three of the fnr-lined coats which had been missed from the Grand Leader stock.

Appellant and his codefendant testified that they purchased the coats and pawn ticket from a man giving his name as John King; that they first bought two coats for which they paid twenty-five dollars each, and about two weeks later bought two others for twenty dollars each, and shortly thereafter bought the pawn ticket for one dollar, without having seen the coat called for by the ticket. Appellant testified that after purchasing the coats he placed them on sale in his store where they could be seen and were seen by the public; that after selling one — the coat described in the information — and failing to get his price for the others, he took the three remaining garments to his home for use by himself, his son and his wife, one of the garments being a lady’s fnr-lined coat, and that they had publicly worn them. He further testified that King represented himself as a travelling salesman, and that these coats which he sold to appellant and the one left at Dunn’s pawnshop were samples which he was anxious to dispose of, and that the coats were bought and received by him in good faith without knowledge that they were stolen. There was testimony tending to corroborate appellant and his son as to the purchase of the coats, and that a man calling himself John King, of the personal appearance described by appellant, had been seen in appellant’s store negotiating for the sale of the coats and had occupied a room at the Planters’ Hotel in said city. Other material facts will be stated -in the course of the qpinion.

I. The first ground upon which appellant urges a reversal of the judgment is that the verdict is not supported by sufficient evidence..

In the consideration of this assignment of error we must review the testimony under the law as decided in the ease of State v. Richmond, 186 Mo. 71, and reaffirmed in later decisions of this court. The rule of [571]*571law established in these cases is that naked possession of property recently stolen is not alone sufficient to raise a presumption of guilt, as in the case of larceny. In addition to proof of possession it is essential to a conviction that the testimony should tend to prove' knowledge of the accused, at the time he received the property, that the same was stolen. iBut direct testimony of such knowledge is not required. It may be inferred from facts and circumstances. The rule is stated in 10 Encyclopedia of Evidence, pi G70, as follows :

“Knowledge that goods were stolen need not be shown by direct testimony, nor is it essential that the accused should have that actual or positive knowledge which one acquires from personal observation of the fact, but the guilty knowledge will be implied if the circumstances are such as should have been sufficient to satisfy a man of ordinary intelligence and caution that property was stolen. ’ ’

And in Kelley’s Crim. Law & Prac., Sec. 684, discussing the same subject, it is said:

“In this case, as in larceny, the possession of goods recently stolen, the corpus delicti being proved, tends to establish the guilt of the party having such possession; but the naked possession, unaided by other proofs, is not evidence that he received them, hnowing them to have been stolen. Slight additional evidence or circumstances may be sufficient to show guilty knowledge, as if he had in his possession other stolen goods, or purchased from the same thief other goods known to have been stolen, or received them under circumstances which would induce a man of ordinary observation to believe they had been stolen, or concealed them. ’ ’

It appears that appellant was a merchant tailor and it is presumable knew the value of clothing. In explanation of the incriminating fact of possession of the property recently stolen, he testified that he bought [572]*572the coat described in the information, worth $87.50', for twenty-five dollars, and from a man with whom he had only the slightest acquaintance. The purchase was not made in the usual course of business, but by this stranger coming into appellant’s store with the garments on his arm; and this, notwithstanding the fact that appellant knew that the person from whom he purchased the four coats was stopping at the hotel directly across the street from appellant’s store.

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Bluebook (online)
150 S.W. 1069, 245 Mo. 564, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 256, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-weinberg-mo-1912.