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67 Miss. 125

Frank v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1889

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1889-10-15

From the circuit court of Warren county. Hon. Ralph North, Judge. Appellant was indicted for receiving stolen goods, a lot of car brasses, knowing them to be stolen. The property was proved to have been stolen from the receiver of the Vicksburg and Meridian Railroad Co. The appellant kept a junk shop in the city of Vicksburg, and after the larceny an agent of the railroad company called with the chief of police on Frank to learn if he had purchased or seen the brasses.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““It is true as held in Sartorious v. State, 24 Miss. 602 , that it is not sufficient to convict the prisoner of receiving goods knowing them to be stolen, to show that he stole them; but where circumstances warrant the conclusion that they were stolen by another, and they are traced to the possession of the defendant, under circumstances sufficient to, make him believe they were stolen, this is sufficient to uphold a conviction. By knowing them to be stolen is not meant that the defendant should personally have witnessed the theft. If the transaction is such as to convince him, or as should do so, that the things were stolen, and he received them, he has knowledge to make him guilty. “The evidence justifies the verdict of the jury. We find no error in the instructions. The assumption in one of them that the goods were stolen by another than Prank, in view of the evidence which made this indisputable, is not ground of complaint.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Francis v. State

Relies on Sartorious v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently June 1986

11 state decisions

3018891890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Campbell, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2It is true as held in Sartorious v. State, 24 Miss. 602, that it is not sufficient to convict the prisoner of receiving goods knowing them to be stolen, to show that he stole them; but where circumstances warrant the conclusion that they were stolen by another, and they are traced to the possession of the defendant, under circumstances sufficient to make him believe they were stolen, this is sufficient to uphold a conviction. By knowing them to be stolen is not meant that the defendant should personally have witnessed the theft. If the transaction is such as to convince him, or as should do so, that the things were stolen, and he received them, he has knowledge to make him guilty.

¶3The evidence justifies the verdict of the jury. We find no error in the instructions. The assumption in one of them that the goods were stolen by another than Frank, in view of the evidence which made this indisputable, is not ground of complaint.

¶4Affirmed.

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