Court : US Supreme Court
..... latter case, whether the principal felon shall or shall not have been previously convicted, or shall or shall not be amenable to justice," etc. under that statute, a receiver of stolen goods was indicted. it was objected that one of the counts did not state the name of the principal, or that he was unknown. tindall, c.j., said: "it ..... that a prisoner is not liable to be affected by the confessions of his accomplices, says: "so strictly is this rule enforced that where a person is indicted for receiving stolen goods, a confession by the principal that he was guilty of the theft is no evidence of that fact, as against the receiver ( r. v. turner ), and it would ..... dakota under the act of congress of march 3, page 174 u. s. 48 1875, c. 144, entitled "an act to punish certain larcenies, and the receivers of stolen goods." 18 stat. 479. the first section provides that "any person who shall embezzle, steal or purloin any money, property, record, voucher or valuable thing whatever of the moneys .....
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..... qatar. the court rejected the defendant's claim that no federal offense had occurred because no international boundary had been crossed, holding that "congress was not aiming only at stolen goods moving across a technical boundary line, but also wanted to reach shipments in the course of such a crossing." 629 f.2d at 837. in barfield v. united ..... today. in united states v. tobin, 576 f.2d 687 (ca5), cert. denied, 439 u.s. 1051 (1978), the defendants were convicted of receiving and conspiring to sell stolen goods "moving as, or which are a part of, or which constitute interstate . . . commerce" in violation of 18 u.s.c. 2315. the court rejected the defendants' argument ..... that the stolen goods had been taken out of interstate commerce by coming to rest, holding that, "[s]o long as its movement within the destination state can be considered a continuation of .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... ," united states v. gottesman, 724 f.2d 1517, 1520 (ca11 1984), phonorecords, or films shipped in interstate commerce as to render those items stolen goods for purposes of 2314, so too would the intangible idea protected by a patent be made tangible by its embodiment in an article manufactured in accord ..... ), cert. denied, 465 u.s. 1022 (1984), where it had held that interstate transportation of videotape cassettes containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures involved stolen goods within the meaning of the statute. [ footnote 5 ] as in belmont, the court reasoned that the rights of copyright owners in their protected property were ..... any explicit indication of congressional intention, to bring such conduct within the purview of a criminal statute making available serious penalties for the interstate transportation of goods "stolen, converted or taken by fraud." likewise, the field of copyright does not cabin the government's theory, which would as easily encompass the law .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... law inference deeply rooted in our law. for centuries, courts have instructed juries that an inference of guilty knowledge may be drawn from the fact of unexplained possession of stolen goods. james thayer, writing in his preliminary treatise on evidence (1898), cited this inference as the descendant of a presumption "running page 412 u. s. 844 through ..... shillings.' to be found thus in the possession of stolen goods was a serious thing; if they were recently stolen, then was one 'taken with the mainour,' -- a state of things that formerly might involve immediate punishment, without a trial; and, later, a ..... the historical development of the presumption: "[t]he laws of ine [king of wessex, a. d . 688-725] provide that, 'if stolen property be attached with a chapman, and he have not brought it before good witnesses, let him prove . . . that he was neither privy (to the theft) nor thief; or pay as wite (fine) xxxvi .....
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..... jones, 682 f.2d 1373 (call 314 souter, j., concurring in judgment 1982), which held that the evidence of unexplained or unconvincingly explained possession of recently stolen goods was not, without more, sufficient to prove theft, but must be weighed more exactly after asking five questions: (1) was "the possession ... recent, relative ..... undercutting the wellestablished general principle in virginia and elsewhere that the trier of fact may infer theft from unexplained or falsely denied possession of recently stolen goods. whether a holding that there was insufficient evidence would constitute one of those unusual cases in which an application of jackson would create a ..... ronnie elkins by name. when pressed on crossexamination about the details of his purchases, west contradicted himself repeatedly about where he supposedly had bought the stolen goods, and he gave vague, seemingly eva- 9 justice o'connor criticizes our failure to highlight in text the fact that congress has considered, but .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... a deep interest, and looking to the ordinary means by which the ends can be accomplished, it is difficult not to perceive that if the owner of the stolen goods be incompetent, it will be found utterly impracticable, in most cases falling within the purview of the section, to procure any conviction, however frequent or however flagrant ..... to have been forged is not a competent witness in england. but a different course has generally, although perhaps not universally, prevailed in america. so the owner of stolen goods has been universally admitted as a competent witness, in america, at least, to prove the identity of his property and the fact of the theft, if not ..... massachusetts. in the case of salisbury v. state of connecticut, 6 conn. 101, the judges of the supreme court of that state held that the owner of goods stolen was a competent witness for all the matters in issue upon an indictment for the theft, although the statute declared that the thief, upon being convicted, should forfeit .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... iron &c.; belonging to railroads or telegraph companies have a legal right to do so. dealers who provide an important and separate market for a particular class of stolen goods may be put in a class by themselves, and so as to dealers in junk. one not included in a class established by a police statute or who is ..... the legal right of the seller to sell, rather than to the question of an original larceny. it ought to be unnecessary to say that, if goods have in fact been stolen, a diligent inquiry into the right of the present possessor to make sale or delivery of them will very surely tend to disclose the larcenous origin of ..... the same then and there consisting of copper wire used by and belonging to a telephone company, to-wit, used by and being the goods, chattels, and personal property of the bell telephone company, of buffalo, . . . then lately stolen, taken, and carried away from the possession of the said bell telephone company, . . . without ascertaining by diligent inquiry that the .....
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..... the light of this purpose, we do not believe that congress intended to restrict the prohibited page 329 u. s. 385 transportation of stolen goods, securities and money, or of counterfeited securities and counterfeiting tools, to situations where it would be effective to complete a specific fraud, in ..... anything in the legislative history to indicate that causing interstate transportation of forged securities was designed to be treated differently from causing the transportation of stolen goods, counterfeited securities, counterfeiting tools, etc., indicates plainly that transporting all these articles is to be treated in the same manner and, moreover ..... in the context of 3. broadly, therefore the government says that the section, as amended, excludes forged securities from interstate transportation just as it does stolen goods, [ footnote 8 ] money or securities, counterfeited securities and counterfeiting tools, or, for that matter, just as diseased cattle, lottery tickets, adulterated foods .....
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..... carried them to new york. can it be said that there is a presumption that he stole them in minnesota and then passed out of the picture while the stolen goods were carried to new york, and that the jury was compelled to attribute his possession in new york to something as indefinite as an "act of god or ..... ordered a new trial. it found error in the charge just quoted. "certainly it is untenable to say" was the crux of its holding, "that the possession of stolen goods raises any presumption that they have in fact been transported in interstate commerce." 147 f.2d 199, 202. and it held that it could not disregard the error because ..... 's possession in new york very shortly after the theft. no evidence was offered to explain this possession of the stolen goods. under these circumstances, the trial judge rightly charged the jury that the unexplained possession of stolen property shortly after the theft was sufficient to justify a finding that the petitioner not only knew that the bonds were .....
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..... the character evidence in the case, i permitted a question whether or not the witness knew that, in 1920, this defendant had been arrested for receiving stolen goods. i tried to give you the instruction then that that question was permitted only to test the standards of character evidence that these character witnesses seemed to have ..... truthfulness" and "being a law-abiding citizen." possession of these characteristics would seem as incompatible with offering a bribe to a revenue agent as with receiving stolen goods. the crimes may be unlike, but both alike proceed from the same defects of character which the witnesses said this defendant was reputed not to exhibit. it ..... the jury may doubt whether he is capable of giving any very reliable conclusions as to his reputation. in this case, the crime inquired about was receiving stolen goods; the trial was for bribery. the court of appeals thought this dissimilarity of offenses too great to sustain the inquiry in logic, though conceding that it .....
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