Hampton v. State

Citations

• 99 Miss. 176
• 54 So. 722

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law. Indictment. Oumership of property. Embezzlement. Evidence. Variance.</p> <p>The rules of law in cases of larceny, with reference to alleging and proving the ownership of the property charged to have been stolen, apply with equal force to the crimes of embezzlement, false pretenses and other kindred offenses.</p> <p>2. Embezzlement. Evidence. Variance.</p> <p>The “American Express Company, a corporation,” is a materially different concern from the American Express Company, a partnership, and an indictment for embezzling the funds of one cannot be sustained by proof that the funds belong to the other.</p> <p>3. Evidence. Admissibility.</p> <p>In a prosecution for embezzlement, testimony of defendant’s assistant in an express office, that four or five months before the office was set on fire and a shortage discovered, while he and defendant were on their way to the depot to meet a train, the appellant told him he was expecting the supervising agent of the express company, and handed witness a note in an envelope and instructed him to return to the office, which witness did and if he (the appellant) telephoned him that the superior agent had come, to deliver the envelope to the Earmers Bank and take what the bank gave him and put it in the “pony safe,” that when the train came, he received a message, but not from appellant, but the depot agent, that the supervising agent of the express company had come; that thereupon he delivered the envelope to the bank and got from it a package marked on the back, four hundred and ninety dollars, which he put in the safe, and which was there when the supervising agent came, was not subjéet to the objection that it related to another crime, since it tended to prove the specific crime.</p> <p>4. Hearsay. Same.</p> <p>Such testimony was not objectionable as being hearsay evidence, as it was competent to show upon what information witness acted.</p> <p>5. Witnesses. Harmless error.</p> <p>In a prosecution for embezzle