Court Opinion

ID: 9931720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-09 18:29:13.698276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:19:38.037294
License: Public Domain

I would suggest that the trial judges examine a direction as to a jury's deliberation upon the phenomenon of the hand-holding thief or fence, substantially as follows:
 "Jurors, if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the property described in the indictment was stolen, and if you further believe beyond a reasonable doubt that then or thereafter the defendant recently possessed it [knowing it was stolen or having reasonable grounds to believe so]1 then such possession [unexplained]2
is a circumstance which you may consider together with all the other evidence in this case in arriving at your verdict."
1 The bracketed language should be left out where larceny only is charged.
2 Where the defense offers an explanation the court may either instruct that the office of such evidence would be to generate a reasonable doubt, the State always having the burden of proving the corpus delicti and the defendant's agency to a moral certainty and beyond a reasonable doubt, or leave the bracketed word "unexplained" in the above suggested pattern charge.