Court Opinion

ID: 9807873
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:18:24.076912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:03:55.570143
License: Public Domain

Smith, C. J.,
dissenting. Two ingredients enter into and' are essential to the constitution of the offence charged in the indictment. As in case of burglary, the entering into the dwelling-house of another, otherwise than by a burglarious breaking, and the there formed intent to commit a felony or other infamous crime therein. Both elements must co-exist and be proved, in order to a conviction of the statutory crime. It differs from burglary, in that no breaking is necessary in the removal of fastenings; the house need not be a •dwelling — nor the entry made in the night season. But in both cases, the act done is inseparably associated with the intent, and the crime is consummated when they co-exist. If the attempt be abandoned after - entrance, it would not remove the criminality; State v. McDaniel, 1 Winst., 249, nor would the offence have been perpetrated, by a felonious purpose formed, and a felony committed, only after entering. But the inference would, in the latter case, be almost irresistible that the purpose to do what was done, was present in the mind of the accused, and an incentive to his entering.
It has been held in the case cited in the opinion of the ■Court, that a jury might infer an intent to commit a larceny from a mere burglarious breaking into a dwelling-house at night, when the party was repulsed before effecting his purpose or giving any indications whatever of it. It is not necessary to call in question the correctness of the ruling, further than to say, that when an objection was made to a conviction for burglary, based on the want of evidence of the imputed intent, this Court, not content with resting its decision upon such authority, met the point thus: “The prisoner broke and entered the dwelling about 10 o’clock in the *400night, and shortly after the inmates had gone to bed. When discovered, he fled; the dress containing the pocket-book had been displaced from where it was, upon the chair, and separated from the other garments, and thrown Upon the' floor, and the pocket-book, which was in it, when the pros-ecutrix retired to bed, was gone; and there was no evidence that any other person had been in the house;” State v. Haynes, 71 N. C., 84.
But assuihing that the breaking into a dwelling at-night, is so usually done for the purpose of stealing goods therein, that a jury may infer the one fact from the other (and it is certainly going far enough to make the admission), the finding ought to be controlled very much by the indications of the purpose promoted by the conduct of the person after he has entered, rather than by conjectures of the purpose in the absence of any such evidence. The defendant, whose manner of getting into the house is-not known, though most probably through the open window, is found quietly sitting on the foot of the bed when the prosecutrix awakes, making no disturbance himself. Startled by her cries, he springs up and dashes out of the window. Another woman occupies a bed some ten feet distant. Nothing is missed, and only her dress, left on a chair, is found now on her bed ; by whom removed, does not appear. How long he had been in the room is not known, but while if theft was his object, he had ample opportunity to take what he was in search of and depart, without disturbing the slumbers of the occupants of the room, yet nothing was carried away. Why was he quietly waiting in that position, unless for some unlawful design upon the person of the prosecutrix, whether to be accomplished by force, if need be, or by voluntary submis■sion hoped for, which would have been frustrated by offering violence before trying her volition? Do not these facts and this conduct repel the suggestion that larceny was his object? The jury were directed not to convict upon the *401charge which alleges an intent to commit rape, for he did not touch the person of the prosecutrix, as did the prisoner grasp the ankle of the sleeping young lady, and thus indicate meditated violence, in State v. Boon, 13 Ire., 244, which evidence, the late Chief Justice said, “ is certainly very slight,” of the imputed intent. Surely, whether sufficient or not to warrant a conviction of an intended rape, it tends strongly to disprove that stealing was the purpose of the unlawful entry, for all the facts' are at variance with that hypothesis.
In my opinion, therefore, there was not sufficient evidence of the intent charged to warrant a conviction, and so ought the jury to have been instructed.
No error. Affirmed.