86 Ky. 1 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1887
delivered the opinion op-the court.
This appeal involves the construction of section 2, article 13, chapter 29, of the General Statutes, which provides:
“If any person, by any false pretense, statement, or token, with intention to commit a fraud, obtain from another money, property, or other thing which may be the subject of larceny; or if he obtains, by any false-pretense, statement or token, with like intention, the signature of another to a writing, the false making whereof would be forgery, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than one nor more than five years.”
By our statute all offenses are either felonies or misdemeanors. Such as are punished with death or confinement in the penitentiary are felonies, while all others, whether so at common law or made so by statute, are misdemeanors. The larceny of goods and chattels of the value of ten dollars or more, under the statute, constitutes grand larceny, and is punishable by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years ; but if worth less than ten dollars, then it is petit larceny, and the offender guilty oí a misdemeanor only.
The appellant, Prank Jackson, was indicted, under the section of the statute above cited, for obtaining eight dollars by false pretenses. His demurrer to the indictment having been overruled, he pleaded guilty as charged, and his punishment was fixed at one year in the penitentiary. He now contends that the word “ larceny,” as used in the statute/ must be held to mean grand larceny; and that the Legislature, in enacting
One may be sent to the penitentiary for fraudulently signing another’s name to a note for less than ten dollars. In such a case it is the fraud that constitutes the offense. If the amount of it were to govern, then its forgery could not be punished by penitentiary confinement, unless it represented as much as ten dollars.
It is not the amount thus fraudulently obtained or the theft itself, but the fraud practiced, which makes forgery for small sums a penitentiary offense. Likewise, the statute now under consideration was not intended to punish the mere larceny, or more properly speaking, the fraudulent appropriation of a certain amount of property; but if obtained by “false pretense, statement or token, with intention to commit a fraud,” then if it might be the subject of larceny, but without regard to its value, it constitutes a penitentiary offense, just as the signing of another’s name to a check without his consent, and with an intention to steal or appropriate it, constitutes forgery, although it may be for less than ten dollars.
It is manifest that this is the correct interpretation
Judgment affirmed.