Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 432 (1925)

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Brooks v. United States

No. 286

Argued January 30, 1925
Decided March 9, 1925
267 U.S. 432

ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

FOR THE DISTRICT OF SOUTH DAKOTA

Syllabus

1. The Act punishing the transportation of stolen motor vehicles in interstate or foreign commerce is within the power of Congress. P. 436.

2. The third section of this act punishes anyone who transports or causes to be transported in interstate or foreign commerce a motor vehicle knowing it to have been stolen, and the fourth section punishes the acts of receiving, storing, concealing, disposing of, etc., "any motor vehicle, moving as, or which is a part of, or which constitutes interstate or foreign commerce, knowing the same to have been stolen." Held that § 4 is constitutional, since its purpose is merely to make more effective the regulation of § 3, and it applies only where the act of storing, concealing, etc., is a final step in the use of interstate (or foreign) transportation to promote the scheme of unlawfully disposing of the stolen vehicle and of withholding it from its owner. P. 439.

3. When the constitutional question upon which a writ of error from this Court to the district court was founded is decided against the plaintiff in error, nonfederal questions arising in the record must also be decided. P. 439.

4. In an indictment charging that defendant knowingly, unlawfully, and feloniously transported and caused to be transported in interstate commerce, between places designated, a touring automobile (stating its value), the property of A, which said automobile theretofore (stating a time) had been stolen from A, and that the defendant did not have A’s consent to transport it between the places named, "all of which he," the defendant, "then and there well knew," the concluding allegation of scienter is to be applied to the whole narrative preceding, so that the charge that defendant knew, when he transported it, that the automobile was stolen is sufficiently definite. P. 439.

5. Where a defendant is convicted by a general verdict upon several counts of an indictment, and is given the same term of imprisonment under each count, to run concurrently, error in the court’s charge applicable to only one of the counts is not ground for reversing sentence on the others. P. 440.

Affirmed.

Error to judgment and sentence imposed by the district court for violation of the "National Motor Vehicle Theft Act."