Blackwell v. State

Cbiminax Law and Pbocedube. Robbery. Indictment. An Indictment is fatally defective if it charge only that the defendant represented himself to he an officer'and, threatened to arrest, and imprison the prosecutor, and did then and there take and - carry away the prosecutor’s personal ptoperty, of designated, value, given defendant by prosecutor through fear of injury to-his person.

■From the circuit court of, first district, Yalobusha county. Hon. Samuel O. Cook, Judge. Blackwell, appellant, was tried and convicted of robbery, was-sentenced to the penitentiary for seven years, and appealed to the supreme court. The indictment against appellant, omitting its introductory formal parts, was as follows: “Walter Blackwell, late of the-county and district aforesaid, on the 2'Tth day of January, 1908, in said county and district, did then and there represent to-?H. B. Bobbins that he was an officer and watchman, and did then and there threaten to arrest the said H. B. Dobbins and put him in jail, and did then and there willfully and feloniously take, steal, and carry away the personal property of the said H. B. Dobbins, consisting of a suit case, the value of $4 and one-suit of clothes, value $20, delivered to the said Walter Blackwell by the said H. B. Dobbins, through fear of threatened injury to-his person by the said Walter Blackwell, said property being the property of H. B. Dobbins, against the peace and dignity of the-state of Mississippi.” The indictment fails to charge any offense. Merely representing one’s self as an officer of the law and threatening to put: another person in j ail, and thereby obtaining, by trick or artifice, the property of another, will not support an indictment charging robbery. Simmons v. State, 28 South. 881. The indictment fails to charge that the property was taken from the person of Dobbins and in his presence. This omission is fatal. Code 1906, § 1361. The indictment fails to charge that the taking was against the wishes or without the consent of Dobbins. The question here presented is whether, under the provisions of Code 1906, § 1361, impersonating a public officer and arresting a person and threatening to put him in jail, and thereby procuring from him possession of his property, constitutes robbery. Frankness compels the statement that we can find no ease so holding, See, however, Simmons v. Stale, '28 South. 881; Bussey v. State, 71 Ga, 100; Long v. State, 12 Ga. 293; Williams v. Slate, 12 Tex. App. 240.