Luckily for this cheeky mare stealer, the judges decided his crime was not a felony. Originally, a there was a distinction between a felony and a misdemeanour. A felony was a more serious crime (and, in this case, a capital charge). This distinction was removed in England and Wales in 1967.
” Samuel Newton was tried for stealing a grey mare, the property of Mr. Watson, of Lambeth. This being a capital charge, and the case rather new, we chuse to give a brief account of it.
Mr. Watson, left his mare in the street, in the possession of a poor man to take care of, whilst he went into the Free Masons Tavern. The prisoner, who must have observed this transaction, went into the Tavern, and on coming out, said to the man who held the horse, ‘my Master stays a long time, he has ordered me to take the mare home, and give you three-pence for your trouble,’ which he accordingly did, and taking off the saddle, he led the horse away, the holder of him thinking the prisoner had been Mr. Watson’s servant. Mr. Watson on missing his mare, found her at last in the Green-yard, in the Strand, taken there by the prisoner as a stray, for which he received a shilling, but without the saddle, which, on being apprehended, the prisoner returned. Baron Hotham, who tried this cause, summed it up as an actual felony, but Judge Willes differed from the Baron, and did not conceive it in that light, or within the meaning of the horse-stealing act; and consulting together, the Baron seemed to lean to Judge Willes’s opinion, and the prisoner was acquitted.”
The Stamford Mercury, 18th December, 1783.