Case ID: ohio_7/html/0224-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Judge Lane", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*John Cheney v. State of Ohio.
    Association with horse-thieves, or subsequent confederation to steal horses, not admissible evidence on a prosecution for stealing a specified horse.
    This cause was' reserved in the county of Richland. The plaintiff in error was arraigned below on an indictment for stealing a gelding, the property of one Lucius Doolittle, in the year 1833. To this indictment, he pleaded not guilty ; and to support the affirmative of the issue thus joined, the state gave in evidence, under the direction of the court, certain confessions of the prisoner, “that subsequently to the alleged larceney, he and divers other individuals had been engaged in one line as horse-thieves.” Also, the pertinent fact, “that defendant was intimate with persons known to be of suspicious character in that respect.” Also, the following to prove the scienter, to wit: “Particular conversations which the prisoner had with witness in regard to horse stealing,” generally. To the admissibility of this evidence, counsel for the prisoner below objected; and on the objection being overruled, took the exceptions on which the present writ of error is predicated.
    J. Stewart, for the plaintiff in error.
   Judge Lane

delivered the opinion of the court:

The testimony admitted, in this case, was altogether inadmissible. The intimacies of an accused person with suspicious or guilty persons do not prove him guilty of any particular crime; neither can a combination to steal horses, formed subsequently to the larceny on trial, be proved to establish that larceny. Evidence to convict a person of a specific offense, must bear upon that offense, and not upon others, or it avails nothing.

Judgment reversed; remanded for new trial.