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119 Ind. 332

Kinningham v. State

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided June 8, 1889

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1889-06-08

<p>Criminal Law. — Arson.—Attempt to Commit. — Indictment.—An indictment charging that the defendant did unlawfully, feloniously and wilfully attempt to set fire to and burn and destroy ” a building, is bad, no act being charged.</p> <p>Same. — Indictment Must Stale the Acts Bone. — To constitute crime there must be both an act and a guilty intention, and the acts done by the accused must be stated in the indictment.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-06-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently October 1930

3 state decisions

10188918901900191019201930decided

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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Elliott, C. J. —

¶1Several objections are urged against the indictment upon which the appellant was convicted, but we deem it necessary to notice only one of them. The indictment charges in general terms that the defendant did “unlawfully, feloniously and wilfully attempt to set fire to and burn and destroy a certain frame building, commonly called a barn.-’-’ No act is charged, and the indictment is radically bad. The charge that the defendant did attempt to do a designated thing is really little more than an averment that he intended to do the thing, and to constitute crime there must be both an act and a guilty intention. Where it is sought to charge an accused with a crime, the acts done by him must be stated. 1 Bishop Crim. Law, section 659.

¶2Judgment reversed.

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