Lopez

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 to have the meaning affixed to it by the common law. But our statute has modified the common-law system of pleading and the rule of procedure in many important respects, and prescribed certain simple rules by which alone the sufficiency of such pleading shall be determined. These rules, or such of them as have a direct bearing on the question under consideration, are contained in the following sections of the Penal Code:—

The defendant is accused, by the information herein, “ with the crime of felony,” which he is charged with having committed by “ stealing, taking, and driving away” a horse, the personal…