73 Mo. 284 | Mo. | 1880
At the April term, 1880, of the Holt circuit court, the defendant was indicted under section 1315, Revised Statutes 1879, and charged with having found $30} the property of one Harrison Vandiver, and feloniously made way with and secreted the same, with intent then and there, feloniously, to convert it to his own use and benefit, with intent to defraud the owner of the same, and to which money defendant had ndt obtained the lawful title. The indictment is in the language of the statute, and aptly states the facts constituting the ofíense. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment in the penitentiary. From the judgment he has appealed.
There was evidence tending to establish the facts alleged in the indictment and fully warranting the conviction.
The defendant offered evidence to prove that it was a general belief among colored people in that county that money or property found, having no marks upon it to indicate its ownership, belonged to the finder. The court properly excluded the evidence. It is a principle as old as the common law that ignorance of the law is no excuse for its violation; and the law is the same for a colored as for a white person. We have not now a criminal code for the whites and a different one for the blacks. Under our present constitution no law making such á distinction would be of any validity. Wharton’s Grim. Law, sec.88, p. 1794, is cited as
.However this may^be, the section of “our criminal code in question makes it á felony in a finder of goods or moneys belonging to another, to convert them to his own use with intent to defraud the owner, or to make way with or secrete them with that intent; and proof of ignorance of the law, or that the finder believed that he acquired the title by finding the property, does hot tend to disprove the intent to convert it to his own use. If he did the act with the double ihtent named in the section, it is no defense that in his ignorance of the general law be supposed that by finding he became the owner of the property.
It .would be no defense that he was ignorant of the section under which he was indicted, which of itself apprises him that lost property does not belong to this finder,, and why his ignorance of the general law to the same effect should avail him as a defense, is beyond our comprehension. By imposing a severe punishment upon the finder who converts to-his own use the. property, of another, direct information is imparted that such does not become his by such finding. This is the itnport of the language of