People v. Goodwin

WASTE, C. J.

The appellants, who are brothers, were found guilty on several counts of an amended information filed by the district attorney of Los Angeles County. Specifically, they stand convicted of murder of the first degree, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and two like assaults with intent to commit murder. The jury by its verdict impliedly having rejected Grant Goodwin’s dual plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity and having returned a verdict on the murder charge without recommendation, judgment- imposing the extreme penalty has been entered against him. In the case of Patrick Goodwin, whose plea went solely to the general issue, the jury recommended life imprisonment on the murder charge and he has been accordingly sentenced. Each appellant, in addition, has been sentenced as prescribed by law on the lesser offenses, some

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of said sentences running concurrently while others are to run consecutively. •

The several offenses were the outgrowth of the robbery of a combination grocery store and market in the perpetration of which robbery or while fleeing from the scene thereof, one of the offenders, admittedly Grant Goodwin, shot and killed the store manager, assaulted a customer and fired several shots at a pursuing police car containing two officers. Some of the shots struck the pursuing car.

Pat Goodwin challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction of the several designated offenses and urges, in effect, that while he admittedly was with his brother and codefendant on the night in question, he had gone with him without knowledge that his brother possessed a gun and had entered the store for the purpose of robbery. He contends that he remained in their automobile, the engine of which was concededly kept running, while his brother ostensibly departed to purchase some cigarettes. Grant Goodwin, who, as indicated, admitted the robbery and the firing of the fatal shot, as well as firing upon the pursuing officers, corroborates his brother’s testimony as to the latter’s innocence of and nonparticipation in the commission of the several offenses.

However, there was ample evidence from which the jury reasonably might, and did, conclude that Patrick Goodwin was a willing participant in the series of crimes of which he stands convicted. In this connection, and in contradiction of the appellants’ evidence that Patrick Goodwin did not leave the automobile at the scene of the robbery, the prosecution produced a disinterested witness who testified that immediately prior to the robbery and homicide he had seen Patrick Goodwin just inside the door of the market looking around and later talking to his codefendant on the sidewalk.