People v. Sakelaris

DRAPEAU, J. pro tem.

*

Defendant in this case was found guilty by a jury of one count of bookmaking, and of a second count of keeping a place with bookmaking paraphernalia. (Pen. Code, § 337a.) He was found not guilty of two other counts; recording a bet, and making a wager. He was sentenced to one year in the county jail.

He urges four grounds of appeal from the judgment:

1. Insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdicts of guilty.

2. Refusal to give instructions requested by him.

3. Comments by the trial judge that he claims prejudiced him with the jury.

4. That exhibits admitted in evidence were unlawfully obtained by search and seizure.

The facts may be briefly stated as follows:

A deputy sheriff was given a telephone number, with information that bookmaking was going on in the premises

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where the telephone was located. So he called the number.

A male voice answered. The deputy said, “This is Al. I want to place a bet. ’’ The voice replied, “ O.K. ” The deputy said, “I want two and two on Desire in the 7th at Del Mar.” The voice answered, “All right.”

Desire was the name of a horse running in the seventh race at Del Mar racetrack on the next day.

The officer, with four others, went to the address given them by the telephone company for that number. They got there in about five minutes.

They found a court with four apartments in a straight line. Two of them had telephones. The officers broke into apartment A, but nobody was there. Then they broke into apartment C, and found defendant holding a telephone instrument in his hand.

The exhibits were on a table near him. Among them were a National Daily Eeporter scratch sheet, a racing parlay manual, betting markers, owe sheets, note books, and a telephone instrument that had written on a card fastened to it the number called by the deputy. These articles are generally used by bookmakers.