STATE v. HILL, 1 Houston Criminal 420 (1874)

THE STATE v. JOSEPH HILL.

Court of General Sessions of Delaware, Kent County.
April Term, 1874.

Joseph Hill was indicted and tried for stealing one local passenger ticket of the value of two dollars and seventy-five cents, of the goods and chattels of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company. It had been stolen from the ticket office and from the custody of the ticket agent of the company at Harrington, and had not been stamped and dated by him, or used, or disposed of by the prisoner on the road or otherwise.

Day, for the prisoner, raised the objection that such an article was not a subject of larceny under our statute. Rex. v. Walsh,
1 Russ. Ryan, 220.

Bates, Deputy Attorney General, read the general provision of the statute defining the crime of larceny, and

Page 421

said the ticket stolen for the commercial use and purpose for which it was made and printed, was worth its equivalent to the amount of just two dollars and seventy-five cents. Had the theft been of a promissory note, bill of exchange, a check or bank note, or any other similar article of commercial use and value particularly mentioned and provided for in the statute, it would have been necessary to so state and describe it in the indictment; but this article is covered by and comes under the broader and more comprehensive class denominated generally as goods and chattels, and which require no other or more specific description than is set forth in it.

But the Court

held otherwise, and Chief Justice Gilpin remarked that the rule at common law is that larceny can only be committed of personal property, or goods and chattels which have some intrinsic value, or a value in itself without reference to any other matter or thing. The intrinsic value of such a piece of printed pasteboard merely is not even appreciable in any coin we have, and as we have no statutory provision making such an article as this railroad ticket a subject of larceny, we do not think the indictment can be sustained, and we must therefore direct the jury to acquit the prisoner.

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