Court Opinion

ID: 9679072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:39:59.754005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:10.049002
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I must dissent from Division V of the majority opinion because it is my view defendant was entitled to have the jury consider his guilt under section 321.76 as an included offense.
The majority opinion sets out the important portions of both section 321.82 (larceny of a motor vehicle) and section 321.76 (operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent). Each requires the unauthorized taking of a motor vehicle; each requires an asportation; and each requires criminal intent. The elements of the two offenses are identical except as to the na*150ture of this criminal intent. Under section 321.82 it must be an intent to permanently deprive the owner of his car; under section 321.76 the wrongdoer intends to return the vehicle after a temporary detention thereof. As we held in State v. Drummer, 254 Iowa 324, 117 N.W.2d 505, when one wrongfully takes another’s motor vehicle, even though he expects to return it, there is nevertheless a criminal intent.
The majority says there can be no included offense because the method of aspor-tation is not necessarily the same. Under the one statute the car must be driven and under the other it merely may be driven.
If this is a worthwhile distinction at all, it is one which should be settled by the evidence in each case rather than by the course the majority has chosen here.
Under authorities cited by the majority the principal crime charged in an indictment embraces a lesser offense if the one is necessarily included within the other and the evidence would justify a jury in finding either. The opinion quotes from State v. Marshall, 206 Iowa 373, 375, 220 N.W. 106, where we posed this proposition in several ways. No matter which of the formulas there set out is used, I find the situation here fits. The indictment charges generally a violation of section 321.82 in terms which, under the evidence, would have permitted the jury to find a violation of either that section or section 321.76.
It is no answer to say defendant “could have” taken the car in some manner other than by driving it away. Of course he could. However, the indictment does not charge that he did nor does the evidence show that he did. If the indictment did so charge, then under this evidence there could be no included offense. If the evidence did so show, then under this indictment there could be no included offense. But here both the indictment and the evidence sustain defendant’s position. The indictment is couched in language which does not exclude the taking of the car by driving; the evidence is without dispute that it was taken by driving.
If the State wished to eliminate driving as a means of taking and to rely on some alternative method — although the example used by the majority is so unlikely that it has probably never until now occurred to a car thief — it should say so. The State chooses the charge and when it does so in general language, and when the evidence fairly falls within such language to show conduct which could be either of two violations, then defendant is entitled to have both submitted to the jury. That is what we have here.
Take away the larcenous intent required under 321.82, and all the elements of a violation of 321.76 are present. It is the evidence, not the indictment or information, which tells how these elements are present. I find nothing in the authorities cited by the majority to conflict with this.
I acknowledge that some other jurisdictions agree with the majority. For example see Eastway v. State, 189 Wis. 56, 206 N.W. 879; People v. Thomas, 21 Cal.Rptr. 161, 373 P.2d 97, and Tillman v. State, Okl. Cr.App., 169 P.2d 223. I prefer State v. Eyle, Or., 388 P.2d 110 as the better and more logical rule.
For these reasons I would hold defendant is entitled to a new trial.
MOORE, RAWLINGS and BECKER, JJ., join in this dissent.