People v. Hughes

NOURSE, P. J.

Informations charging defendant with robbery and mayhem were consolidated and tried to a jury which returned verdicts of guilty on both charges. Defendant’s motion for a new trial was ordered denied. He appeals from the judgments and the order.

Nelson, the complaining witness, testified that he had known and lived with defendant for about two months at-a farm where they had both been sent after conviction of drunkenness. On June 8, 1944, Nelson went to Oakland after work to see a doctor, returned to San Francisco and entered a tavern at First and Mission Streets at “approximately close to nine o’clock” to have a sandwich and beer. While drinking the beer he noticed defendant and another man and started conversing with them. One of the men told Nelson that “they had a bottle” and invited him outside for a drink. He thereupon opened his wallet; paid his check and left with the two men. Upon reaching a gasoline station at Main and Howard Streets the unidentified man demanded Nelson’s pocketbook. The victim handed the man a wallet containing identification cards but upon further demand gave him the wallet in which he kept his money. Throughout the altercation between Nelson and the other party the defendant stood a few feet away

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and did nothing other than to serve as a lookout for his associate. Nelson told defendant that it was a serious offense in which the men were engaged and that he would do time at the penitentiary, whereupon the other man raised his arms and Nelson recalled nothing more. He was found the next morning by the gas station attendant and was sent to the hospital. A street cleaner found Nelson’s wallets nearby and turned them over to the police. Nelson was taken to a hospital where his eyes were found to be so badly ruptured and so swollen that no examination was possible for eleven days; his face was badly bruised and his mental condition was such that no case history could be provided until two months after the beating. The injury to the eyes was such that he became permanently blind.

The defendant denied that he had any participation in the altercation, denied that he had ever been in the tavern, and testified that he was in another part of the city at the time of the attack. He was substantially contradicted in all his testimony and left the jurors no course other than to decide whether they would believe the straightforward testimony of the victim or the denials of the defendant.