Scott County IL Archives Court.....Jones, V The People 1850
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Deb Haines http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000719 May 23, 2008, 8:04 pm

Source: Records Of Cases Illinois
Written: 1850

Joshua W. Jones, plaintiff in error, v. The People, defendants in error.

Error to Scott.

In a trial for larceny, if the court instruct that possession of property 
recently stolen, is prima facie evidence of guilt, it is wrong to refuse an 
instruction, based upon the hypothesis that the accused had fairly acquired 
the property by purchase. (a)

Jones was indicted for larceny at the September term, 1843 of the Green 
Circuit Court, and obtained a change of venue to Scott county. At the 
September term, 1840, of the Scott Circuit Court Jones was tried and 
convicted. After hearing a motion for a new trial, and overruling the same, 
the court sentenced Jones to one year in the penitentiary.

Jones brings the cause to this court, by writ of error.

W. I. Ferguson and M. McConnel, for plaintiff in error.

D. B. Campbell, District Attorney, for The People.

Treat, C. J. The plaintiff in error was convicted on an indictment for 
larceny. On the trial, the court, at the instance of the prosecution, 
instructed the jury that "possession of property, recently stolen, is prima 
facie evidence of the guilt of the possessor, unless he shall make a 
satisfactory and uncontradictory account of how he obtained the possession." 
The court declined to give the following instruction, demanded by the 
prisoner: "If the jury believe, from the evidence, that the defendant bought 
the property, and paid for it in the city of Springfield, and this purchase 
was open and public, unconnected with any suspicious circumstances of guilt, 
that is a satisfactory account of his possession of the property, and removes 
all presumption of guilt, growing out of his possession thereof." The refusal 
to give this instruction, is assigned for error.

The instruction is subject to no just exception. It asserts a correct legal 
proposition, and the court erred in refusing it. It is manifest, from the 
circumstances of the case, that the refusal of the court to give the 
instruction, may have materially prejudiced the prisoner. The court had 
already in effect, instructed the jury that, if the property was found in the 
possession of the prisoner, after it was stolen, a prima facie case was made 
against him, and he was bound, in order to discharge himself, to show 
satisfactorily how he obtained the possession.

The instruction in question, supposed state of case, which fully repelled any 
presumption arising from the mere fact that the property was found in the 
possession of the prisoner. It was based on the hypothesis that he had fairly 
acquired the property by purchase. If it came into his hands in that way, the 
subsequent possession was entirely consistent with his innocence.

The refusal of the court to to give the instruction, may have left the 
impression on the minds of the jury, that the facts indicated therein, if 
appearing in evidence, were not sufficient to overcome the presumption of 
guilt, resulting from the possession of the property.

The judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded for further proceedings.

Judgment reversed.

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(a) The possession of property recently stolen, unexplained, is prima facie 
evidence of guilt: Conkwright v. The People, 35 Ill., 204; Comfort v. The 
People, 54 Ill., 404.

Additional Comments:
Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois from 
November Term, 1850, to June Term, 1851, both inclusive by E. Peck, Counsellor 
at Law. Volume XII. Reprinted from the Original Edition, with Annotations by 
William Gordon McMillan of the Chicago Bar. Callaghan & Company, Chicago, Ill. 
1881.

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