Court Opinion

ID: 9825358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 12:43:40.285309+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:40:44.139345
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
The evidence in this case shows that the seed cotton alleged to have been stolen was taken from the porch of the house of Will Oonnell. The appellant contends in his application for rehearing that the porch is not a part of the dwelling house, and that the taking therefrom could not constitute larceny under section 7324 of Code 1907. Section 3170 of the Code of 1852 provided that—
“Any person who commits larceny in any dwelling house, storehouse, smokehouse, etc., on conviction must be imprisoned in the penitentiary not less than three or more than six years.”
Construing .this statute in the case of Henry v. State, 39 Ala. 680, the Supreme Court held that the taking of clothes from the banister or railing of the porch attached' to the dwelling house did not come under the ban of the statute, and that such taking was not a taking in the dwelling house. No change was made in this statute until the Code of 1SS0, when the word “from” was incorporated therein, making the crime, when complete in other respects, that the taking should be “from or in any dwelling house.” This change was evidently made to meet the holding in Henry’s Case, supra.
Our understanding however, of the holding in the Henry Case, is that the court merely held that, while the porch may, in some sense, be a part of the house, it was not, under section 3170, in the dwelling house, in such a sense as that a felonious taking therefrom would constitute a taking in the dwelling house. A taking front the dwelling house is very different from taking in the dwelling house.
Appellant could with as much reason contend that the felonious taking from the roof of the house would not fall under section 7324 as to contend in this case that the taking from the porch of the dwelling house is not from the dwelling house.
Application for rehearing overruled.
July 19, 1921. Reversed and remanded under authority of Luther Driver and Enoch Mims v. State, 206 Ala. 195, 89 South. 504.