People v. Gilbert

Citations

• 60 Cal. 108
• 1882 Cal. LEXIS 410

Syllabus

<p>Bobbery—Verdict.—Upon the trial of an information for robbery, the verdict was as follows: “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty as charged in the information;” and it was claimed that the crime of robbery charged in the information, also involved the crime of grand larceny, of which it was within the power of the jury to find the defendant guilty, and that the verdict should have specified which of these two crimes, robbery or grand larceny, the defendant was found guilty of.</p> <p>Held: It is no argument against the sufficiency of the verdict in this case, that robbery includes larceny, and that under an indictment and prosecution for the former, a defendant may be convicted of the latter crime. The jury in this case has found the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment, and the charge in the indictment is the crime of robbery; and we do not, therefore, discover any uncertainty in the verdict.</p> <p>Id.—Instruction—Relevancy of Instructions—Reasonable Doubt— Circumstantial Evidence—Hypothesis—Definition.—The Court refused to give the eighth instruction asked by defendant, which was as follows: “The hypothesis contended for by the prosecution must be established to an absolute moral certainty, to the entire exclusion of any rational probability of any other hypothesis being true, or the jury must find the defendant not guilty”—the refusal being placed upon the ground that “ this is not a case of circumstantial evidence, and the instruction is not responsive to the testimony in the case.” The evidence given was that of the party robbed, and was direct and positive, and not circumstantial.</p> <p>Held: Where all the evidence in the case is direct and positive, and the defendant’s guilt is in no manner dependent upon an agreement of circumstances, there is no such thing as a hypothesis, in the theory of the prosecution, and an instruction based upon such a theory becomes irrelevant and immaterial. There was nothing in the case to warrant such an instruct