People v. Chambers

DRAPEAU, J.

By an information containing two counts, defendants were charged jointly with the crimes of burglary and grand theft, in that on April 6, 1950, they entered a warehouse with intent to commit theft and unlawfully took away over $200 worth of cigarettes.

The jury found them guilty as charged and the crime of burglary was fixed at second degree. Thereafter, defendant Chambers’ application for probation was denied and he was sentenced to state’s prison. He alone appeals from the ensuing judgment of conviction.

It is here contended that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the verdict on either count of the information, and that the trial court erred in its refusal to give appellant’s proposed instruction on the question of identification.

This court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to respondent.

(People

v.

Newland,

15 Cal.2d 678 [104 P.2d 778].)

An examination of the record discloses that about 8 o ’clock in the morning of April 6, 1950, Mr. Yowell, a route salesman for the Coast Cigarette Vendors of 2811 South Hill Street, Los Angeles, loaded his ear with a day’s supply of cigarettes, approximately 4,000 packs. His ear was parked on a loading platform located on a roof-covered driveway within the warehouse of the said vending company. After he finished loading the car he stepped into the office about 40 feet away. When he returned in about five minutes he discovered that four cases of cigarettes, containing about 2,100 packages, were missing from his car.

About the same hour, Mrs. Margaret McMahon, who occupied a rear ground floor apartment in a building adjacent

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to the warehouse, noticed a blue two-door Buick coupé parked at an angle in 28th Street opposite her apartment. Her attention was first attracted to the car, she said, because it was illegally parked. She then observed appellant Chambers carry three cases of cigarettes, one at a time, from the direction of the warehouse to the car. One of these he placed in the “turtle,” and as he did so, she saw another case therein. Defendant Carlson stood near the car and helped appellant place the case in the turtle and two more cases in the back of the car. While appellant was hurrying back and forth from the warehouse to the car, Mrs. McMahon wrote the license number of the car on a piece of paper. Before the men drove off, she saw defendant Carlson bend the license plates “so as to hide the number.” Mrs. McMahon gave the license number to the salesman, Mr. Yowell, and described the men as two colored gentlemen, one tall and one short.