1 McAll. 196 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern California | 1856
(charging jury). We approach, we trust, the termination of this case with the single desire to dispense evenhanded justice between the parties. Each of you, placed upon that panel, has called upon his God to witness that he has neither bias nor prejudice in this case. As for myself, though it is my sworn duty to convict him whom the law condemns; yet to. convict improperly under the- forms of law would fill me with horror as great as if I were to take into my own hands the issues of life and death, and send down to the grave my fellow-creature without the forms, the guards, and the sanctions which the constitution, the laws, and humanity have thrown around him. Animated by this sentiment, I proceed to state to you the law which, in the opinion of this court, must control your action. In order to fix your attention on the only issue you are sworn to try, it is necessary to separate it from all collateral considerations. The defense is rested upon the ground that, in seizing the arms for the taking of which the prisoner has been indicted, he was acting in obedience to the orders of a body which we charge you was unauthorized by and banded together in violation and defiance of the laws. It is our duty to say to you that no orders emanating from such a source can vary the character of the act charged against the prisoner, if it be established that he is guilty of it under the law and testimony in this case.
Again, gentlemen, the prisoner may have been guilty of a crime or crimes other than that for which he is Indicted; he may, in what he has done, have acted with those who deserve execration as unfeeling violators of the laws of their country, or merit approbation as patriotic citizens. In a word, he may have transgressed every precept of the moral or municipal law. Those, and all other like considerations, must be dismissed from yotir minds. He is on trial for a single offense,— piracy. Any other crime he may have committed; but if you shall find he is innocent of the one now charged against him, he must go free. This is demanded by an immutable principle of justice. No man can be held responsible for an act unless, after having been confronted with his accuser and an impartial trial had, he has been found guilty; and then his responsibility must be confined to the specific crime that has been proved against him. This is a right guaranteed even to a malefactor. It has been truly said by a distinguished author that, “the law withdraws its protection from a malefactor while actually engaged in illegal acts; but at any other moment, it protects his person and property as impartially as it does yours or mine. For instance, if a burglar breaks into my house, I may then and there cut him down like a dog. If a pickpocket puts his hand into my pocket, I may knock him down. But if I break into a notorious felon’s house, and rob him, I am just' as great a felon in the law’s eye as if I so robbed an honest citizen; and so, if I attack a burglar’s or a pickpocket’s person and life at any moment when he is not felo-niously engaged, I am none the less a villain in the law’s clear eye because my villainy is aimed at an habitual villain. And here the law is not only just but expedient; for were such fatal partialities admitted, we should soon advance from doing acts of villainy upon villains to calling any one a villain whom we wished to wrong, and then wronging him.” Thus vigilant and just is law; it views every man before judgment innocent, so far as affording him an opportunity to defend himself surrounded by those guards which the law has prescribed. To deal differently with an accused party, would violate alike the' precepts of municipal law and the dictates of natural justice. We repeat, then, your duty is to limit your attention to the single inquiry whether the prisoner is guilty or not of the specific crime for which he is indicted.
The indictment is founded upon the 3d section, of the act of May 15, 1820 (3 Stat. 600). So much of it as is necessary to be considered is in the following words: “That if any person shall upon the high seas, or in any open roadstead, or in any haven, basin, or bay, or in any river where the sea ebbs.
The only inquiry, then, is, what was robbery at common law at the time of the separation of the American colonies from the parent country? U. S. v. Palmer, 3 Wheat. [16 U. S.] 610. In robbery, which is larceny accompanied by intimidation or force, the felonious intent in taking constitutes the offense. Blackstone tells us, the taking and carrying away must be done animo furandi, or, as the civil law expresses it, lucri causa. Lord Coke, in his Institutes, and Hawkins, in his Pleas of the Crown, give the same definition. 1 Hawk. P. C. 93. Archbold states that “larceny, as far as respects the intent with which it is committed, is where a man knowingly takes and carries away the goods of another without any claim or pretense of right, with intent wholly to deprive the owner of them and to appropriate or convert them to his own use.” In Pear’s Case, East, P. C. tit. “Larceny," § 2, Baron Eyre defines larceny to be “the wrongful taking of goods with intent to spoil the owner of them causa lucri.” • The foregoing authorities all include in larceny, as an essential element, what is termed the lucri causa. A similar view is taken by the supreme court of Missouri in the case of State v. Conway, 18 Mo. 321. “The taking (say the court) must be done animo furandi, or, as the civil law terms it, the lucri causa. The felonious intent is the material ingredient in the offense.” To constitute this offense, therefore, in any form,- there must be a taking from the possession, a carrying away against the will of the owner, and a felonious intent to convert it to the offender’s use. Again, in the state of Delaware it was ruled, that if the party indicted for larceny, where he took a horse for the stealing of which he was indicted, intended to appropriate him to his own use, by selling or retaining him to his own use. it was felony; but if he only took him to aid him in his escape as a runaway slave, it was no more than a trespass. 2 Har. 529. In Alabama, the supreme court considered the doctrine at common law to be “that the criminal intention constitutes the offense, and is the only criterion to distinguish a larceny from a trespass. That, according to the common-law writers, to constitute the offense of larceny it was not sufficient that the goods be taken for the purpose of destroying them to injure his neighbor, and actually destroying
The foregoing decisions embody, in a practical form, the principle enunciated in the definitions given by the text-writers. We will now advert to three or four recent English decisions, which seem to qualify the doctrine. In the year 1815, two decisions were made in England, which were subsequently followed by two others, without comment or discussion. The first is that of Rex v. Cabbage, 1 Russ & R. 292. The principle enunciated was, “that if the intent be to destroy the article taken, it will be sufficient to constitute the offence of larceny, if done to serve the prisoner or any other person, though not in a pecuniary way.” The case was this: The prisoner, to screen his accomplice, who was indicted for stealing a horse, broke into the prosecutor’s stable and took away the horse, which he backed into a coal pit and killed. A majority of the judges decided this was larceny. At such a decision we are not surprised to find Lord Abingdon exclaiming, in 1838, when that case was cited in his presence, “I cannot accede to that!” The second English case on this point, is Rex v. Morfit, 1 Russ. & R. 307, decided on the authority of the former. There, A and B, servants, opened the granary of their master by means of a false key, and took two bushels of beans to give to their master's horses, in addition to the quantity allowed; and it was held to be larceny. Some of the judges alleged that the additional quantity of beans would diminish the work of the men who had to look after the horses, and this diminution in their labor was considered a lucri causa. The astuteness with which the lucri causa was sought for and discovered in that case, is strong proof of the stringency of the rule which requires it as an essential ingredient in the crime of larceny. This case is referred to by a recent writer as a “singular case on this point.” Archb. Or. Law (Ed. 1853.) Such it undoubtedly is; as in effect it destroyed the distinction which had existed from an ancient period between larceny and trespass, unless we can, with some of the judges, detect the existence of the lucri causa in that ease. Looking into the cases last cited, and die grounds on which they were decided, we deem the observations made in relation to them by the supreme court of Alabama, not
After a careful examination of the law, we give you, gentlemen, the instructions which follow: 1. That if you believe, from the evidence, that the prisoner took and carried away the arms, with the intent to appropriate them, or any portion of them, to his own use, or permanently deprive the owner of the same, then he is guilty. 2. But if you shall believe that he did not take the arms for the purpose of appropriating them, or any part thereof to his own use, and only for the purpose of preventing their being used on himself or his associates, then the prisoner is not guilty.
Verdict, “Not guilty.”