Caseflicks

Wisconsin Supreme Court • 1943

Gray v. State

9 N.W.2d 68 | 243 Wis. 57 | 1943 Wisc. LEXIS 72

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Takeaway

In short, this case confirms that a nighttime-burglary element may rest on strong circumstantial evidence, and that evidence obtained through an unproven-to-be involuntary, vehicle-related search was admissible.

Background

Edmund Feldner’s home near Rosendale was burglarized during the night of June 19–20, 1941. Clothing was taken from inside the house, although some garments were found outside the next morning. At about 1:30 a.m., truck driver George Habeck saw three men and their black Illinois-licensed La Salle parked near Feldner’s home. He later identified the defendants and their car.

The next evening, Deputy Sheriff Robert Shiels located the defendants in that car south of Fond du Lac. After the owner opened the trunk at Shiels’s request, Shiels found Feldner’s missing clothing. The defendants gave inconsistent accounts of how they acquired it, including claims that they won or bought it in a roadside craps game from a person called “Mexican Joe.” When police located a man known by that name, both he and the defendants denied knowing one another.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to nighttime burglary with intent to commit larceny. A jury convicted them. They challenged the sufficiency of the proof that the burglary occurred at night, the timing of the admission of the clothing evidence, and the legality of the vehicle search. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the judgment.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the evidence permitted the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the burglary occurred during the statutory nighttime period.

Holding

Yes. The circumstances sufficiently supported a finding that the entry occurred in the nighttime.

Reasoning

Wisconsin defined “nighttime” as the period from one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise. On the dates at issue, that period ran from 8:39 p.m. on June 19 to 3:23 a.m. on June 20. Although Feldner last saw his clothing at about 8:30 p.m. and discovered it missing at 5:30 a.m., those times alone left open the possibility of either a daytime or nighttime burglary.

Habeck’s testimony supplied the critical circumstantial evidence. He left Fond du Lac around 1:00 a.m. and, after normal travel time, saw the defendants and their car immediately near Feldner’s residence at approximately 1:30 a.m.—plainly within the statutory nighttime period. The jury could reasonably connect their presence there, their later possession of the stolen clothing, and their conflicting explanations to conclude that the burglary occurred at night.

Issue #2

Whether the trial court admitted the stolen clothing before the State had established the corpus delicti of burglary.

Holding

No. The State established that a burglary had occurred before the challenged exhibits were offered and received.

Reasoning

Feldner first testified that his home had been burglarized and identified the clothing that was taken. The State also presented evidence connecting the defendants to the crime before formally offering the clothing exhibits. Thus, the prosecution had already supplied proof of the charged offense, rather than using the exhibits to establish the offense in the first instance.

The defendants’ effort to strike all exhibits was also overbroad and untimely. Some items had already been admitted without objection, and other exhibits had not yet been introduced when counsel made the motion. When the State later offered all of the identified clothing exhibits, the defendants made no objection.

Issue #3

Whether clothing found in the defendants’ automobile trunk was inadmissible as the product of an illegal search and seizure.

Holding

No. The defendants did not establish an unlawful search, and the seizure was lawful on the record before the Court.

Reasoning

The party seeking suppression bore the burden of showing that police violated a protected right. Here, Deputy Shiels testified that the defendants consented to opening the trunk and that the search was peaceful. Mangrum, the car’s owner, opened the rear compartment himself at the officer’s request. The mere fact that an officer requested access did not prove that the defendants’ consent was involuntary, and the defendants introduced no evidence to the contrary.

The Court also held that the search was valid as incident to the defendants’ lawful arrest for vagrancy. Because the clothing was legally obtained during that encounter, it remained admissible in the later prosecution for nighttime burglary even though the vagrancy charge was dropped. The Court additionally recognized the practical distinction between automobiles, which can quickly leave the jurisdiction, and fixed places such as homes, for which officers ordinarily have time to obtain a warrant.