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30 Mo. 92

State v. Gazell

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided March 15, 1860

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1860-03-15

Louis Criminal Cowl. I. There was no legal asportavit proved. The fourth instruction given by the court is erroneous. The court plainly tells the jury that a larceny had been committed, the very thing they were called upon to decide. The instruction more than revives the rigor of the old common law.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently November 1958

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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Soott, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The defendant was indicted for horse-stealing, convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. On the trial it appeared in evidence that the horses were in an enclosure. A witness testified that he saw a man leading one of the horses with something on him — a bridle or line. The court instructed *93the jury that “ if the defendant took or led the horse away any distance with a felonious intent, then the asportation is complete, as much so as if the party had succeeded in removing the horse away altogether, and in such case it makes no difference that the horse or horses had not been removed from the enclosure or lot in which they were at the time of the larceny.” This instruction was excepted to.

¶3The least removal of the thing taken from the place where it was before is a sufficient asportation, though it be not quite carried off. As where one takes a horse and is arrested in the act of leading him from the enclosure of the owner, or where one takes goods in an inn and carries them into the hall with an intent to steal them and is apprehended before he gets out of the house, he was adjudged guilty of larceny. So where one takes plate from a chest and lays it on the floor and is surprised before he can carry it away, or removes goods from one end of a wagon to the other but is detected before he gets them out, the offence is complete and he is guilty of larceny. (2 East. P. C. 555-6.)

¶4The judgment is affirmed; the other judges concurring.

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