69 Pa. Super. 196 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1918
Opinion by
It will be necessary, for an intelligent understanding of the legal questions involved, to briefly recite the facts upon which the Commonwealth seeks to sustain the judgment of the court below. The defendant for some time was a shoe merchant in Kittanning, Armstrong County. In January, 1916, he opened a branch store in Oakland, a small mining town about twenty miles from Kittan
The defendant urges that the Commonwealth has not shown that the fire was of incendiary origin and that testimony showing an independent crime to have been committed, should not have been submitted to the jury in aid of the conviction of the crime charged in the indictment.
The defendant was the last person about the building when the entire room occupied by him was in flames. His statement thereafter voluntarily made was admissible. It was his account of the fire. The Commonwealth proved it to be false. When the defendant, without solicitation or promise, chose to explain how the fire occurred, he subjected his remarks to a very close exami
It is the theory of the prosecution that the fire was intended to conceal the fraud perpetrated on the defendant’s creditors; it was one of the possible plans that might be selected by a person bent on defrauding his creditors in the manner devised by the defendant.
“It is a general rule that a distinct crime, unconnected with that laid in the indictment, cannot be given in evidence against a prisoner. It is not proper to raise a presumption of guilt, on the ground, that having committed one crime, the depravity it exhibits makes it likely he would commit another”: Shaffner v. Commonwealth, 72 Pa. 60-65. The objection to this sort of evidence is that it compels the defendant to meet a charge of which he had no notice. It confuses him in his defense, raises collateral issues, diverts the attention of the jury from the crime immediately being tried, and generally shows that the defendant should be convicted because he is a bad man. We do not intend to modify this principle. There are certain exceptions to it. Where the other crime testified to furnishes a motive, such evidence is competent. While the motive with which an act was done is immaterial in deciding the question of criminality, motive may be shown as evidence of intent. It is that which leads to the act. It need not be proven, but when evidence tending to show motive is offered it must follow as a logical inference that it had a strong tendency to induce the commission of the act charged; there should be some common rela
While the evidence in this case undoubtedly tends to establish another offense, it was offered for the purpose of showing a motive or reason for the crime charged in the indictment. We are concerned only with the purpose for which this evidence was introduced. To get the shoes from Kittanning to Philadelphia without his creditors or others knowing what had become of them, it was necessary to use a subterfuge and the subterfuge used to screen or cover the shipment of real goods to Philadelphia was the bogus shipments to Oakland. The defendant’s name not appearing in the Philadelphia shipments, ordinarily no trace of this movement would be discovered. Had the Oakland store remained undisturbed by fire, an examination of the contents of the building by creditors would have shown that no goods were shipped to this store. This, of course, would have
The evidence as to the acts done before the fire, showing a continuous chain of events, was competent. This defendant was under surveillance from the time the railroad officers discovered the bogus shipment of shoes. When it was shown that the fire was of incendiary origin, all the offers of evidence were competent to show the motive for the fire was to conceal the fraud practiced upon the creditors by the sale of shoes in Philadelphia. We need not discuss the assignments in detail. The defendant contends there was no evidence to show that a specific person had been defrauded. He had been declared a bankrupt. That proceeding, with all its information coupled with the testimony of the receiver, showed the defendant’s liabilities to far exceed his assets, so his creditors must suffer a loss. The surreptitious manner in which the transaction was carried out, with the receipt of the money placed in some unknown depository, completed the fraud. Unquestionably his creditors as a class were defrauded. They were all his creditors. It was not necessary to show that some individual person did lose money. The bankruptcy records were sufficient. The charge of the court was a careful review of the law. It was not necessary for the judge to comment on the evidence; it was important that the propositions of law be plainly stated to the jury. The court directed their attention to the purpose for which the evidence was offered showing the fraud practiced.
The judgment is affirmed and the record remitted to the court below to the end that the sentence may be carried into effect.