United States v. Andrew Wayne Kinney

Andrew Wayne Kinney, an Indian, appeals from a judgment determining him to be a juvenile delinquent ( 18 U.S.C. § 5031 ), in that he committed the crime of burglary, as defined by Arizona law, within the boundaries of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona ( 18 U.S.C. § 1153 ).

Kinney does not attack the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the court’s finding of delinquency, but confines his assignment of errors to the court’s rulings on the admission of evidence. His principal complaint goes to the admission of testimony concerning incriminating statements which he, Kinney, made to Wilke Nash and McKinsey Smith, when they apprehended him the day after the burglary. At that time Kinney was wearing a pair of boots and carrying a jacket that were taken in the burglary; but, as Kinney points out, bare possession of recently stolen goods, while sufficient to support an inference of larceny, is ordinarily not prima facie proof of burglary — there must be some evidence of guilty conduct besides the bare possession of the stolen property before the presumption of burglary is super-added to that of the larceny. Kinney’s argument is that testimony concerning the…