Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/544

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518
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

already completed offense any of its essential elements. In the pursuit of a single criminal enterprise, two offenses have been committed, each independent of the other—one, the ulterior purpose, the theft; and the other, the means adopted from necessity to effect it, the breaking and entering the building, the criminal intent all the time accompanying the act. Authorities are cited by the learned state’s attorney to sustain the form of the information he has employed, but this case stands upon a statute, and not upon adjudications. Formerly distinct offenses might be set up in the same indictment in different counts. This rule, however, would not avail the state’s attorney, although there had been no statutory change in this respect, as these two offenses in this case are charged in the same count, This, asa general rule, could not be done. But there were exceptions to such a rule. Without stating other exceptions, it is sufficient, for the purposes of this case, to say that one of these exceptions would justify the course adopted by the state’s attorney in this case. It was proper to charge burglary and grand larceny in the same count, when both offenses were committed in pursuit of the same criminal enterprise. It is urged that our statute merely declares the common-law rule. This is a mistake, and the fallacy of the reasoning which leads to this conclusion lies in the assumption that it was a part of the common-law doctrine against duplicity that burglary and larceny might, under such circumstances, be charged in the same indictment. It was not a part of that doctrine, but an exception to the rule. Our statute declares the rule in the most comprehensive manner, without the qualification of any exception. “The indictment must charge but one offense.” § 7244, Comp. Laws. We have no right to ingraft an exception upon the statute. We must infer that it was for the purpose of abrogating the exception that the rule was declared by the legislature without such exception. That the right to charge burglary and larceny in the same count was an exception to the rule against duplicity, and not a part of it, cannot well be questioned in view of the explicit language of the authorities. In Breese v. State, 12 Ohio St. 146, the court say: “The general rule undoubtedly is that two distinct crimes or offenses