People v. Shannon

CRAIL, P. J.

This appeal is taken from judgments of conviction on one count of conspiracy to violate section 245 of the Penal Code and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and from an order denying a motion for a new trial. Appellant and his codefendant Holmes were tried before a jury which returned verdicts of guilty on all three counts.

The principal contention raised by appellant is that the evidence is insufficient.to sustain the verdicts on each of the three counts. The evidence discloses that at the time the acts charged in the informations were committed, a strike of the delivery and warehouse departments of the May Company, a department store in Los Angeles, was in progress. Appellant and defendant Holmes were former employees of said store and were participants in the strike.

During the morning of January 15', 1938, in the same general vicinity of the city of Los Angeles, four different

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employees of the May Company and their accompanying guards, employees of a detective agency, were assaulted while driving May Company trucks. These assaults consisted in certain objects being impelled or thrown against the trucks; in two instances the objects penetrated the windshields, causing injury to the drivers. At the time when three of the attacks occurred, the driver and guard in each instance testified that a certain dark-colored or black Ford sedan with yellow or cream-colored wire wheels was just passing or had just passed the truck. Some of the drivers and guards testified that said sedan bore 1937 license plates, having a number commencing with the figures “1-P” or “1-P4”, but that they had been unable to obtain the complete license number. It appeared that appellant at that time owned a Ford sedan, similarly colored, which bore 1937 license plates numbered “1-P4328”. Appellant’s car had been located in a parking lot two days after the assaults and was there identified by two witnesses as the same car which had been observed at the scene of the attacks. In the case of one assault the driver and guard saw two men in the front seat of the Ford sedan and one in the rear, the latter being identified as defendant Holmes, who at that time was apparently about to or had just shot some object from a sling-shot which he held in his hands. In one of the other assaults defendant Holmes was identified as the occupant of the rear seat of the sedan, and in one instance appellant was identified as the driver of the car.