Court Opinion

ID: 9567782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:57:41.742629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:37.248894
License: Public Domain

Haden, Chief Justice,

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent to that part of the holding of the majority relating to the trial court’s refusal to charge the jury on the offense of “joyriding.”
The felony of larceny of an automobile involves the taking of a vehicle without the owner’s permission and with intent permanently to deprive the owner of his property. Comparatively, the misdemeanor offense of joyriding involves the taking of an automobile without the owner’s permission with intent temporarily to deprive the owner of his vehicle. Crow v. Coiner, 323 F. Supp. 555 (N.D. W. Va. 1971).
If the jury had been permitted to consider that the accused took the victim’s automobile while in a state of intoxication for the purpose or nonpurpose of joyriding, *178perhaps, that body, upon the conflicting evidence in this case, would have chosen to convict Mr. Bailey of the misdemeanor offense. Even as summarized by the opinion writer for the majority, the basic facts of this case raise the reasonable inference that the defendant was intoxicated and that while intoxicated he took an automobile for the purpose of “joyriding.”
The point is that the intent of the defendant was most certainly a matter in issue in this case, and the question of whether the accused intended temporarily or permanently to deprive the victim of his automobile was a matter of fact which should have been resolved by the jury upon proper instruction. I am of the opinion that the defendant, Mr. Bailey, was prejudiced by the trial court’s refusal to grant the joyriding instruction and upon review, such prejudice should be presumed to have contributed to his conviction for the felony of grand larceny.
Respectfully, I assert that it is pure legal sophistry to say that an accused is not entitled to a joyriding instruction in a trial upon an indictment for larceny of an automobile on the premise that the different degree of intent required to convict for the higher crime, as opposed to the lesser crime, excludes consideration of the lesser crime as a “lesser included offense.” The quality of justice would not be strained if the law should benefit from more realistic application.