Expert: Jack Toomey - 2/3/2007

Question
Hello!

You may or may not be able to help me with this...it's a simple question, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere.

I am a novelist, and I am writing a book about stagecoach robbers. The sherrif is hot on their tail. My question is this: Would stagecoach robbery be a felony? Were these kinds of crimes even called felonies in the late 1800s? Or were all kinds just basically "crimes?" When did felonies start being called felonies?

Hope you can help! Thanks in advance!  

Answer
Chris,

   Stagecoach robberies are a little out of my area of expertise and I can't say that I have ever been asked about one before.  But to determine whether a stagecoach robbery was a felony or not you would first have to start with which state this incident happened in since all fifty states have their own sets of laws.  Most of the original thirteen colonies adopted "common laws" which were unwritten laws such as murder, rape, robbery, arson, etc, that had been brought from England.  Later the territories, that became states, wrote their own laws called "statuatory laws" which means that the laws were passed by the various legal bodies in those states.

  I have no idea what crimes were called in the late 1800's but I think that you would be safe calling a stagecoach robbery a felony as long as the occupants were held up at gunpoint by the criminals.