Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

106 Ala. 178

Bowen v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1894

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1894-11-15

Tried before the Hon. John R. Tyson. The appellant was tried upon the following indictment : “The grand jury of said county charge that before the finding of this indictment, Dave Bowen, with intent to steal, broke into and entered the dwelling house of Israel Robertson, and did feloniously take and carry away fro’m the dwelling house of Israel Robertson four five dollar bills, commonly known and called greenbacks, of the paper currency of the United States of the value of…

Relies on Gordon v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1894-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently February 1975

1 district · 10 state decisions

20189419001910192019301940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

BBICKELL, C. J.

¶1— It was doubtless the purpose of the pleader to charge in the single count, of which the indictment consists, the combined offenses of burglary and grand larceny. But the count is wanting in an averment of the ownership of the goods alleged to have been stolen, and without such averment is wanting in an essential constituent of an indictment for larceny. When the criminating element of the crime of burglary is the intent to steal, if there is not only the criminal breaking, and entry, but a consummation of the evil intent, the felonious taking of Life goods of another, the burglary and larceny are so clearly connected and so combined that the two may be charged in a single count of the indictment. Gordon v. State, 71 Ala. 315. The count must of necessity, contain the averment of every fact necessary in a separate count for each offense ; otherwise it cannot be construed as charging the combined offense,-but the offense only of which the essential constituents are averred. In its present form the count charges only burglary. The finding by the jury of grand *180larceny, operated an acquittal of the burglary. The acquittal will not operate to bar a subsequent indictment for the larceny.

¶2The judgment of the circuit court must be reversed and the cause remanded. The appellant will remain in custody until discharged by due course of law.

/106/ala/178 · .json · Public domain