People v. Kelly

By the Court,

Currey, J. ■ The defendant was indicted for grand larceny. He was tried and found guilty and sentenced to be imprisoned in the State Prison for the term of five years. The evidence against him was mostly of a circumstantial nature, and though it is not insisted, it was not sufficient to warrant a verdict of guilty, if the case had been properly submitted to the jury, yet the defendant claims that the Court erred in matters of law on the trial to his prejudice, and that in consequence thereof the verdict and the judgment pronounced upon it should be reversed.

At the request of the District Attorney the Court instructed the jury as follows : “Although the jury are to be satisfied of the guilt of the defendant in order to convict, yet they have a right to take into consideratipn all the surrounding circumstances in making up their verdict, and if from such circumstances they believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the prisoner is guilty, although there may have been no eye witness of his taking the property, they must find a verdict of guilty.” The defendant’s counsel insists that the instruction did not limit the jury to the circumstances proved in the case. It must be presumed the Court was speaking of the circumstances which were in evidence, and that the jury understood the charge as referring to those circumstances and none others; because in such cases the jury is presumed to be composed of “ good and lawful men,” possessed of at least ordinary good sense, and capable of appreciating the obligation of their oaths to render a verdict “ according to the evi[426]deuce.” The obvious meaning of the instruction is this, that if the jury, from all the circumstances in evidence, believed without any reasonable doubt intervening, that the defendant was guilty of the crime alleged against him, then the verdict should be in accordance with such belief, even though no one saw the defendant steal the money described in the indictment. The instruction is an inculcation of a plain rule of law, namely, that if the circumstances proved establish the truth of the fact in issue to a reasonable and moral certainty; a certainty that convinces and directs the understanding and satisfies the reason and judgment honestly and conscientiously exercised, then the verdict should in effect determine the existence of such fact; or in other words, should be according to the evidence. (Com. v. Webster, 5 Cush. 320 ; Sumner v. The State, 5 Blackf. 580.)

The Court also instructed the jury, at the request of the District Attorney, in the following words : “ If the jury bel.ieve that the property was stolen and was found in the possession of the prisoner very shortly after being stolen, and the prisoner failed to account for such possession, or to show that such possession was honestly obtained, it is a circumstance tending to show his guilt; and the accused is bound to explain the possession in order to remove the effect of the possession as a circumstance to be considered in connection with other suspicious facts.”