Commonwealth v. Dattala

Citations

• 77 Pa. Super. 320
• 1921 Pa. Super. LEXIS 261

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Receiving stolen goods — Lapse of time — Presumption — Charge of court.</p> <p>While, in order to convict a defendant of larceny because of possession of stolen goods, it must be made to appear that the possession was recent, yet where there is evidence that the defendant had failed to comply with the law relating to the sale of secondhand vehicles, and that an effort had been made to efface the numbers of the machine, with other suspicious circumstances, the ease was for the jury.</p> <p>Presumption of larceny, however, only arises from recent unexplained possession of the stolen goods, and when the machine was found in the defendant’s possession five months after the theft, it was error to charge that the burden was upon the defendant to account how he had secured the machine.</p> <p>The entire question was for the jury and there was no burden upon the defendant to establish his explanation at his peril. It was sufficient for him, if under all the evidence a reasonable doubt existed as to his guilt.</p> <p>Trials — Charge of court — Evidence—Character evidence.</p> <p>Instructions to the jury that if “man is guilty of a crime, or if the evidence would warrant you in finding him guilty of the crime, no evidence of good character prior to that time would work his acquittal,” is not a correct statement of the eSect of character evidence. The vice of such instruction is that it separates the evidence of character, and conveys the idea that if there be other evidence sufficient to warrant a conviction, the evidence of good character could not work an acquittal. Such instruction Constitutes reversible error.</p> <p>Appeals — Superior Court — Question not raised below — Judges— Orphans’ court judge — Presiding in quarter session's.</p> <p>If no objection is made to the fight of an orphans’ court judge to preside in the quarter sessions at the time of a trial, it cannot be made, on appeal, to the Superior Court.</p>