## Facts

- Bell entered G.B. White’s land without permission.
- Bell dug up sweet potatoes and heads of cabbage that were still growing in the soil.
- Bell severed the vegetables from the land and immediately carried them away as part of a single episode.
- The State charged Bell with petit larceny on the theory that he stole White’s personal property.
- A jury convicted Bell of petit larceny.

## Issues

1. Whether a defendant commits common-law larceny by severing crops from the land and carrying them away in one continuous act.
2. Whether the trial court’s larceny instruction was legally correct where the items taken were originally part of the realty.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the petit larceny conviction.
- The court held that when severance and carrying away occur as one continuous act, the conduct is not larceny because the property was not “personal property of another” before the taking.
- The court characterized the conduct as trespass to land rather than larceny.

## Legal Principles

- Common-law larceny requires a wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal property of another, with intent to permanently deprive the owner of it.
- Growing crops attached to the soil are part of the realty; they are not personal property for larceny purposes until severed.
- Larceny of items attached to land requires a separation between (1) severance (conversion to personalty) and (2) a subsequent trespassory taking and asportation of the resulting personal property.
- If the defendant both severs and removes the items in one continuous transaction, the offense is trespass rather than larceny.

## Conclusion

Because Bell severed the vegetables from the land and removed them immediately in a single continuous act, the vegetables never existed as White’s personal property before the taking; the larceny conviction was therefore reversed, leaving only a trespass theory supported by the facts.


Bell v. State, 63 Tenn. (4 Baxt.) 426 (1874)