Case ID: mass_1/html/0087-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Sedgwick, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth versus John Cullins.
    The wife of a person who has been absent six or seven years in the East Indies, cannot be considered as a feme sole. A person stealing goods in another state who brings them into this state, may be indicted here for the larceny.
    The defendant was indicted for larceny. The indictment contained two counts, the first of which charged the defendant with stealing 98 handkerchiefs, of the goods and chattels of Hannah 
      Healey; in the second count the goods stolen were alleged to belong to Walter Healey.
    
    The defendant pleaded not guilty. The Attorney-General, (Sullivan,) in opening, stated that Walter Healey, the husband of Hannah Healey, had been absent six or seven years in the East Indies; that, if alive, it was not probable he would ever return ; and that his wife had, for several years past, at D., in this county, been in trade, and carried on business as a feme sole. And he had drawn the indictment in its present form, that if the defendant should be convicted, and by the sentence of the Court assigned in service, the Court might, if they thought it legal, direct a verdict to be taken on the first count only, in order to enable Hannah Healey to make the assignment.
   The Court (Strong, Sedgwick, and Thacher, justices) thought that the goods stolen could not be considered as the property of Hannah Healey, who was, in legal estimation, still the wife of Walter Healey, and, therefore, that the prisoner, if at all convicted, could not be found guilty of the first charge in the indictment.

It appeared in evidence that the whole number of the handkerchiefs alleged to have been stolen * were originally taken in the state of Rhode Island, seventy-six of which were traced and found by him in this county.

Sedgwick, J.,

who summed up the evidence to the jury, said the Court were clearly of opinion that stealing goods in one state, and conveying stolen goods into another state, was similar to stealing in one county, and conveying the stolen goods into another, which was always holden to be felony in both counties; and, therefore, the jury (if they believed the witnesses,) wrould find the defendant guilty of stealing 76 handkerchiefs on the second count in the indictment.

The jury found a verdict accordingly. 
      
       In The People vs. Gardner, 2 Johnson’s New York Term Reports, 477, it was decided that a prisoner apprehended in the state of New York, m possession of a horse which he had stolen in Vermont, could not be convicted in the former state.
      It is true that if a man steal goods in one county, and carry them into another it is felony in the second county, “ for the continuance of the asportation is a new Caption.” But there was by the common law an allowed diversity in cases where the original caption was not a felony, or was not such a felony as came within the cognizance of the law. A pirate carrying goods, whereof he had robbed the owner uprn the high seas, into any county, could not there be indicted of the-larceny. — 1 Hawk, c. 33, § 9. — So when’ one stole goods in Scotland, and carried them into England, he could be convicted of larceny in the latter country. — East, C. L. c. 16, § 156, Rex vs. Anderson. — This, however, is now altered by stat. 13 Geo. III. c. 34, § 4. — The doctrine of this case (Commonwealth vs. Cullins) was, however, confirmed by the Court in a subsequent case, where an indictment was supported against a person who received here goods stolen in New Hampshire. — Vol ii. 14. Commonwealth vs Andrews —[See the note to that case, where its authority is doubted. — Ed.]