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Taylor v. State1/25/2000
s research. For some allegations that are factual or self-evident, no authority at all may be required. When the authority cited is something other than a judicial precedent, I would not reject it for that reason alone. Court opinions are not the only or even the initial source of most law.
. Multiplicity and duplicity.
Counts I-IV charged embezzlement on four specific dates. Count V charged embezzlement over a seventeen month period, but specifically excepted the dates of Counts I-IV. Taylor argues that these charges were multiplicitous and duplicitous. Multiplicity is the "practice of charging the commission of a single offense in several counts. This practice is prohibited because single wrongful act cannot furnish basis for more than one criminal prosecution." Black's Law Dictionary 1016 (6th ed. 1990). Duplicity "prohibits the simultaneous charging of several distinct, unrelated crimes in one indictment." Id. at 503.
. A statute cited by the majority appears to me to control as to duplicity, not multiplicity. Miss. Code Ann. § 99-7-2 (Rev. 1994). A multi-count indictment, which is allowed by this statute if the offenses meet the stated requirements, is actually a duplicity problem. After this statute, some duplicity (as the term is intended here) is permitted. The statute was passed in 1986 and changed the existing law. Blanks v. State, 542 So.2d 222, 225 (Miss. 1989); see Dixon v. State, 465 So.2d 1092, 1096 (1985). The statute permits different offenses to be charged in one indictment if they are sufficiently connected. The counts of this indictment all charge embezzlement committed by the same person from the same victim over a continuous period of time. I find no duplicity defect.
. Multiplicity on the other hand is never allowed. Again, that is dividing one crime into several separate ones in order to get multiple convictions and sentences. Multiplicity doctrine prevents the act of robbing a store clerk of 50 one dollar bills out of the cash register from being made into a 50-count indictment, one for each bill.
. We are asked to decide if this is a single seventeen month long embezzlement. If so, then it is multiplicitous to cause five counts to be drawn up about it. As the majority discusses, the State may charge a long-running embezzlement as occurring on one day, and proving that it occurred over a much longer time period will nonetheless support that conviction. Davis v. State, 108 Miss. 710, 67 So. 178, 180 (1915). The counts on which Taylor was convicted were for embezzlement on three separate dates: October 3, November 14, and November 21, 1994. The problem that Taylor properly highlights is that since Davis holds that conviction of an embezzlement that is charged as occurring on a certain day may be supported by proof of funds taken over a several day period, there is a potential overlap of these offenses.
. My first reaction is that even though the State may rely on such evidence, here the evidence to support the convictions on these three counts did in fact focus on money taken on those three days. There was evidence that a specific dollar amount of receipts was posted on each of those dates and other evidence that this money was not ultimately received by the City. Each of those offenses was self-contained and had concluded. I find no overlap of the facts used to prove the three charges.
. Secondly, I agree that there could have been a problem if Taylor had been convicted of Counts I-IV that allege specific days of embezzlement, and also convicted of Count V. That last count is problematic since it only excluded the four specific days mentioned in Counts I-IV. Davis says that conviction for offenses
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