Natividad Salinas v. United States

The appellant, Natividad Salinas, was accused of the crime of arson in the first degree by the first count of a two-count indictment filed in the United States District Court for the Territory (now State) of Alaska. The second count charged him with an offense designated as “burning to defraud insurer.” With respect to the first count, the trial court instructed the jury that the charge of arson in the first degree as set out in the indictment included a charge of arson in the second degree. The jury acquitted the appellant of the crime set out in Count Two of the indictment, but found him “guilty of the crime of arson in the second degree as included in the offense charged in Count No. 1 of the Indictment.”

The sole ground urged by appellant for reversal of the judgment is that the indictment did not charge him with the crime of which he was convicted — that is, arson in the second degree. The language of the first count of the indictment, so far as need be noticed here, is as follows:

That * * * the defendant Natividad Salinas willfully and maliciously set fire to and burned a dwelling house which contained a restaurant known as the Kotzebue Grill and which contained living…