Case ID: va_38/html/0752-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "SCOTT, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*Green v. The Commonwealth.
    December, 1841.
    Criminal Law — Bail—What Is Good Cause for — Case at Bar. — Prisoner examined in a corporation court, and sent on for trial in the circuit superior court, on charge of aiding and abetting an officer or a bank to embezzle money and bank notes confided to his care to amount of 100,000 dollars or more, and of larceny of money and bank notes of the bank to the same amount; 24 indictments are preferred against him for aiding and abetting the officer to embezzle, and for larceny of, 24 several sums of the same money, at several times, as several and distinct offences; prisoner is brought to trial on one of the indictments, and acquitted; it appears, that the indictments are founded on a single criminal transaction, and though the acts charged in the indictments might be prosecuted as several offences, yet they might all have been included in one indictment: Held, the acquittal of the prisoner in one case, furnishes such a presumption of his innocence in the others, as entitles him to be bailed.
    Upon a petition of a prisoner in custody on sundry indictments of felony, to be admitted to bail.
    Green was examined in the hustings court of Richmond, on charges, of feloniously aiding, abetting and counselling Dabney, late first teller of the bank of Virginia, to embezzle and fraudulently to convert to his own use, money and bank notes, to the amount of 100,000 dollars and more, the property of the bank, placed under the care and management of Dabney as first teller; and of larceny, committed by Green himself, of money and bank notes the property of the bank, to the same amount of 100,000 dollars or more: and, on the 15th June 1840, he was sent on by the hustings court, to be tried for these offences in the circuit superior court for the county of Henrico and city of Richmond, and, the next day, committed to the custody of the sheriff and jailor of Henrico.
    In .the circuit superior court, the charge was distributed among no .less than twenty-four indictments, charging the prisoner with aiding and abetting Dabney to embezzle, and with larceny of, twenty-four several *sums of money or bank notes, at several times, as so many several and distinct offences. The indictments were all alike, containing one count founded on the statute of February 1820, Supp. to Rev. Code, ch. 223, § 2, p. 278, for feloniously aiding, abetting and counselling Dabney to embezzle, and feloniously and fraudulently convert to his own use, money or bank notes, the property of the bank, confided to his care as first teller, and another count charging the prisoner with larceny of the money or bank notes.
    The trial of these indictments was delayed (by causes which it is needless to mention) till October 1841; when the prisoner was brought to trial on .one of them; and, after a trial which lasted from the 30th October till the 12th November, he was acquitted by the verdict of the jury. There was not time during the residue of the term to try him upon any of the other indictments (indeed, the verdict was rendered on the last day of the term) and the court re- ■ manded him to jail, there to beheld in custody to answer the remaining twenty-three indictments.
    And now he presented a petition to this court, praying that he might be let to bail, and a writ of habeas corpus to bring him before the court, in order that he might be heard on that application, and be bailed.
    The court ordered the habeas corpus; and upon the return thereof, on the motion of his counsel, a subpoena duces tecum was sent to the clerk of the circuit superior court, to bring into this court the original indictments, and all the records belonging thereto; which were- brought into court accordingly, and from them the above state of the case has been collected.
    In support of the application for bail, the prisoner’s counsel, Taylor and Hyons, represented the long confinement of eighteen months which he had already undergone: that the charges had been multiplied against "x'him by preferring twenty-four indictments for several imputed offences, all of the same kind, growing out of the same transaction, and resting on the same evidence and the same grounds of law; whereas the whole might as properly have been included in one indictment : that as he had been already tried upon one of these indictments, selected by the attorney for the commonwealth, doubtless, as being the strongest case, and after a full investigation, and a long protracted trial, acquitted by the verdict of the jury, this acquittal afforded a most persuasive (if not conclusive) argument, that there could be at the most only a light suspicion of his guilt upon the other indictments, or rather, indeed, sufficed to shew his innocence : and that, considering the number of juridical days allowed for the terms of the circuit superior court, the mass of criminal business there, and the time which the recent trial had occupied; if the trials of the other twenty-three indictments should be alike protracted, as certainly they might and probably they would be, the prisoner might be confined in jail for ten or twelve years, before his innocence could be established upon all the indictments; nay, probably enough, he might be confined for life ; and oppressive and cruel persecution of a man, whom his late trial and acquittal on one of the indictments, in truth and in substance for the same offence, shewed to be probably innocent of all the charges.
   SCOTT, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court. It appears from the record and proceedings of the examining court, and the indictments, taken together, that the latter are founded on a single criminal' transaction ; and although the acts charged in the several indictments, are each criminal in themselves, and may be prosecuted as separate offences, yet they might all have been included in one indictment, and the prisoner compelled to submit to a trial by one jury. It is a fair presumption, *that the commonwealth has put him upon his trial in the case in which the proof against him was strongest: and the jury having on a fair and full investigation found him not guilty in that case, furnishes such a presumption of his innocence in the others, as entitles him to bail.

The prisoner was thereupon bailed, upon a recognizance of himself in the penalty of 10,000 dollars, and sufficient sureties in the same sum, that he should appear and answer the remaining indictments in the circuit superior court.