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30 Minn. 522

State v. Brin

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Decided July 3, 1883

Supreme Court of Minnesota · decided 1883-07-03

Defendant and another were arraigned in the district court for the county of Otter Tail, upon the following indictment, viz.: “Louis Brin and H. Malloy are accused by the grand jury of the county of Otter Tail and State of Minnesota, by tbis indictment, of the crime of larceny, committed as follows'. “The said Louis Brin and H. Malloy, on the 13th day of July, A. D. 1882, at the city of Fergus Falls, in the county of Otter Tail, in the state of Minnesota, feloniously topk,…

Relies on State v. Lawlor · Ward v. George Huhn & Co. · Lanz v. McLaughlin

Cited in Black's (1910)’s definition of “Railway”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1883-07-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently April 1957

10 state decisions

3018831890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Berry, J.

¶1Gen. St. 1878, e. 95, § 26, reads': “Whoever steals, takes, and carries away any railroad passenger-ticket or tickets, prepared for sale to passengers, previous to or after the sale thereof, being the personal property of any railroad company, or any other corporation or person, is guilty of larceny.” The indictment before us, which is founded upon this section, charges that defendant “feloni-ously took, stole, and carried away divers and sundry genuine railroad passenger-tickets, prepared for sale to passengers, and after the sale thereof, the personal property of, and issued by, the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Bailroad Company, a railroad corporation,” etc.

¶21. The statute was evidently framed to meet, inter alia, the case of an appropriation of tickets which had been sold by the railroad company to a passenger, and taken up by a conductor, so as again to become the property of the company by which they were issued, but which, instead of being returned to the proper depositary, were otherwise disposed of by the conductor or some other person with a larcenous intent. Keeping this purpose of the statute in view, it will be apparent that there is no repugnancy in the statute itself, or in the indictment, which substantially pursues it. Notwithstanding a ticket has once been sold, it may subsequently become the property of the company which issued it, by being properly taken up by a conductor.

¶32. After describing the tickets as above quoted, the indictment proceeds to allege that a more particular description of any of them, or their number, is to the grand jury unknown. The description is sufficiently definite, not only within the rule of State v. Taunt, 16 Minn. 99, (109,) but also within the narrower rule of State v. Hinckley, 4 Minn. 261, (345.)

¶43. The discrepancy between the name in the indictment, “The St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad Company,” and the name “The St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company,” is unimportant. “Railroad” and “railway” are used interchangeably. They are as nearly exact synonyms as any two words in the language. Though the latter name was, in strict accuracy, the correct corporate name of the company intended, there can be no doubt that *525the other name is used as designating the same company. In common speech it is its more frequent designation.

¶54. We have carefully perused the evidence, and, in our opinion, it furnishes ample support to the verdict, especially when the nature of the criminal transactions charged, and the intrinsic difficulty of ferreting them out, are taken into consideration. The testimony of the defendant’s accomplices is sufficiently corroborated by other evidence fairly tending, in some degree, to convict defendant of the commission of the offence. Gen. St. 1878, c. 73, § 104; State v. Lawlor, 28 Minn. 216. The testimony of the detective Powers, especially with reference to ticket No. 346; the testimony of Lounsbury as to the defendant’s bribing him to give false testimony in regard to the manner in which defendant obtained some of the tickets, so as to exculpate him from the offence charged; the unsatisfactory nature of the testimony of the defendant himself, in attempting to account for the large number of tickets found in or traced to his possession; the contradictions of his testimony by other witnesses, and the testimony of Horn and other testimony as to many circumstantial matters, — are of this corroborative character.

¶65. We do not discover that any objections or exceptions were taken to the charge of the court. While this is a good reason why we should not consider the objections made here to the charge,—State v. Staley, 14 Minn. 75, (105;) Cole v. Curtis, 16 Minn. 161, (182,)—we may add that, upon looking into it, we are of opinion that none of the objections are well founded.

¶7The judgment of the district court is affirmed, and its sentence directed to be executed.

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