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111 Mass. 429

Commonwealth v. Smith

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 15, 1873

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1873-01-15

<p>An indictment alleging that the defendant certain goods, in a certain building and in ilia possession of a certain person being found, did steal, sufficiently charges a stealing in the building.</p> <p>A lodger in a dwelling-house went to bed, having placed his clothes on a chair; the defendant took from a pocket of the clothes the key of the lodger’s trunk, opened the trunk, which was in the same room, and stole money therefrom. Held, that the defendant was guilty of larceny in a dwelling-house.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1943

4 state decisions

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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.

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Gray, J.

¶1The indictment duly charges larceny in a building. The allegation that the defendant stole property in the dwelling-house described necessarily includes a statement that the act of stealing was done in the building. And the whole charge was supported by the proof. In order to constitute larceny in a dwelling-house or other building, the property stolen must indeed be under the protection of the house, and not under the eye or personal care of some one who happens to be in the house. The King v. Owen, 2 Leach, (4th ed.) 572. Commonwealth v. Hartnett, 3 Gray, 450, 452. But money of a lodger in his trunk, as well as the key of the trunk in a pocket of his clothes, is clearly,, while he is in bed, undressed and asleep, not under his own protection, but under the protection of the house. Rex v. Taylor, Russ. & Ry. 418. Rex v. Hamilton, 8 C. & P. 49. The defendant was therefore rightly convicted of larceny in a building.

¶2 Exceptions overruled.

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