People v. Lopez

Fitzgerald, C.

The information upon which the defendant was tried and convicted of the larceny of a horse is claimed to be fatally defective, because it fails to charge that the offense was committed feloniously.

At common law, simple larceny, whether grand or petit, was a felony, and was defined to be the felonious taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another. The word “ feloniously” was therefore essential to the validity of an indictment for larceny, and it has been uniformly held that this word, when used in a statute or constitution without being defined, should be construed…