State v. Winter

706 P.2d 1228, 146 Ariz. 461, 1985 Ariz. App. LEXIS 625
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arizona
DecidedApril 2, 1985
Docket1 CA-CR 7366
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 706 P.2d 1228 (State v. Winter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Winter, 706 P.2d 1228, 146 Ariz. 461, 1985 Ariz. App. LEXIS 625 (Ark. Ct. App. 1985).

Opinion

OPINION

GERBER, Judge.

Appellant, Jonnene La Vae Winter, and her co-defendant, Dean Edward Nicholson, were charged with two counts of theft, class 3 felonies, in violation of A.R.S. § 13-1802. Appellant’s trial was severed from that of her co-defendant and she was found guilty of both counts. The jury returned a special verdict that the theft ah leged in Count II occurred before the theft alleged in Count I. Appellant was sentenced to concurrent mitigated terms of six years and four years imprisonment on Count I and Count II, respectively. The issues on appeal are:

(1) Whether appellant was denied due process because she was convicted of a crime not charged;

(2) Whether the trial court erred in denying appellant’s motion to suppress;

(3) Whether the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on the crime of “joyriding;” and

(4) Whether the court erred in submitting to the jury a special verdict.

*463 L FACTS

On December 19, 1982, at approximately midnight, Phoenix Police Officer Regina Hernandez stopped appellant who was driving a 1982 Datsun 280ZX with Missouri dealer plates. Appellant was stopped because she was traveling up against the yellow lane divider between the high speed lane and the median wall of the freeway, was weaving within her lane and had no expiration date sticker on her Missouri license plate. After Officer Hernandez stopped appellant she asked for the vehicle registration and appellant stated.that she did not have one because the car belonged to her boyfriend, a Missouri car dealer. When asked her boyfriend’s name, appellant hesitated but stated that his name was Harry Frances.

Officer Hernandez asked appellant to remove the papers which were covering the vehicle identification number (VIN) on the dashboard. Although appellant removed the papers, she placed them back over the VIN while Officer Hernandez was recording it. Officer Hernandez again requested appellant to remove the papers which covered the VIN, recorded the number and, after radioing the number into the station, learned that the vehicle was stolen. Thereafter, Officer Hernandez placed appellant under arrest and took possession of her keys.

The following day, Officer William Woods, who had been investigating appellant and Dean Edwards Nicholson in connection with another matter, learned that appellant had been arrested the preceding evening for possession of a stolen vehicle. Officer Woods set up surveillance of appellant’s apartment and observed a red Mazda RX7 parked in appellant’s parking space. Officer Woods previously had run a check on the Mazda’s license plate number and found that it belonged to another vehicle. At approximately 2:00 p.m., he observed appellant approach the Mazda with a key and driver’s license in her hand and open the car door. When asked who owned the vehicle, appellant stated that it belonged to Harry Frances. After Officer Woods removed papers covering the VIN, he radioed the number in to the police department and was advised that the Mazda was a stolen vehicle. Appellant was again arrested.

II. SUFFICIENCY OF THE INDICTMENT

The indictment alleged two counts of theft in violation of A.R.S. § 13-1802. Specifically, it charged appellant with two counts of theft committed knowingly controlling property 1 with the intent to deprive the owners of the property. The state did not specify in the indictment a violation of any particular subsection.

The trial court instructed the jurors that they could return a verdict of guilty if appellant violated subsection (A)(1) (control of property of another with intent to deprive) or subsection (A)(5) (control of property knowing or having reason to know it is stolen). Specifically, the court in the instructions stated:

The crime of Theft requires proof of the following two things:
The Defendant without lawful authority knowingly controls another person’s property, and the Defendant intended to deprive the other person of the property, *464 or the Defendant knew, or had reason to know, that the property was stolen.

Appellant now argues that the effect of the “alternative instruction ... was to amend the indictment so as to allow Appellant to be convicted of theft on the basis of a lower level of scienter than was originally charged, a lower level of which Appellant had no notice until after all testimony at trial.” 2

The troublesome issue here is the degree of specificity required for a criminal indictment: Is a general citation of A.R.S. § 13-1802 sufficient for a theft charge, or must the indictment cite specific subsections as well, and if so, is a conviction limited to the specific subsection cited?

Our jurisprudence has travelled a long way from the practice of the Emperor Caligula, who conveniently wrote the Roman laws on pillars too high to be read by his subjects. Nor do we adopt the other extreme of “extreme technical precision” in our indictments. State ex rel. Purcell v. Superior Court, 111 Ariz. 418, 419, 531 P.2d 541, 542 (1975). Under the present state of our law, a criminal charge is sufficient if it clearly sets forth the offense in a manner which enables a person of common understanding to know what is intended.

There are two distinct reasons for finding the indictment sufficient and thus for affirming the conviction, the first being the unitary nature of the theft offense, and the second the provisions of Rule 13.5, Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure. In the first place, theft in A.R.S. § 13-1802 is presently a single offense even though it has multiple subsections. It was not always so. In our prior criminal code, there existed a proliferation of theft offenses covering almost any kind of taking of almost anything. The present A.R.S. § 13-1802 consolidates the multiple prior theft offenses of embezzlement, conversion, larceny, finding and keeping stolen property, theft by false pretenses, and other similar “verbal distinctions” to produce a single unified offense. The Criminal Code Commission Commentary expressly acknowledges this consolidation:

The essence of theft pursuant to § 1801 [A.R.S. § 13-1802] is the obtaining of unlawful control over property of another with the intent to deprive him or her thereof.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
706 P.2d 1228, 146 Ariz. 461, 1985 Ariz. App. LEXIS 625, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-winter-arizctapp-1985.