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7 Mo. 55

Lorton v. State

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided May 15, 1841

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1841-05-15

Louis Criminal Court. 1st. That the stealing of goods at different times, of the value of 4d, 6d, and 3d, was punishable at common law as grand larceny. 1 Hawk. Pc. ch. 33, sec. 33. That if this severity was seldom practiced, it was because of the rigor of such proceeding. Ibid. That consolidation was a favorite principle of common law, both in civil and criminal cases, and that in the latter it was always adhered to, when unopposed by considerations of humanity.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1841-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently November 1992 · most notably Hagan v. State (1992), Furnace v. State (1899)

24 state decisions — followed in 12 states

501841185018601870188018901900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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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¶1Opinion of the Court by

Napton, Judge.

¶2Lorton was indicted by the grand jury of St. Louis county, for stealing the goods and chattels of Richmond Curie, and at the same time was also indicted for stealing the goods of one John B. Gibson. The defendant plead guilty to the first indictment, and to the second plead a former conviption for the same offence. It appears from the bill of exceptions, that the prisoner on the day mentioned in the indictment, was found in a room of the Missouri Hotel, in the city of St. Louis, at a late hour in the evening, and being seizedbv Richmond Curie, and'one JobnB. Gibson, who were lodgers therein, and who were awakened by the noise made by the prisoner, confessed that he had been concerned in stealing goods therefrom, in company with another, and search being immediately made, the goods of said Curie and Gibson were found-lying on the stair steps and in the passage, where they had been dropped by the thief, who was making off with them. The goods of Curie and Gibson were. *57found precisely in the same condition. The prisoner had been sentenced under the first indictment to two years prisonment in the penitentiary. The prisoner, by his counsel, prayed the court to instruct the jury, that if they believed from the evidence that the goods of Curie and Gibson were stolen at one and the same time, then the circumstance of said goods belonging to separate owners did not constitute several offences, and that if any person by the same act and at the same time should steal the goods of A, E, and C, this constituted but one felony, or offence against the State ; and that if they should believe under the preceding instruction, that the stealing of the goods of said Curie and Gibson was one transaction, then the former conviction of the prisoner operated as a bar. The court refused to give this instruction : the prisoner excepted, and moved for a new trial, which was overruled, and the case is brought here by error.

The stealing of several articles of property at the same timeand place, constitutes but one offence, and the circumstance of several ownerships of the property cannot increase or mitigate the nature of the offence.

¶3The court should have given the instructions asked by the prisoner. The stealing of several articles of property, at the same time and place, undoubtedly constitutes but one offence against the laws, and the circumstance of several ownerships cannot increase or mitigate the nature of the offence.

¶4The judgment will be reversed.

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