People v. Felix

GRIFFIN, J.

Defendants and appellants were jointly charged with a felony, to wit, possession of a blackjack. They were tried without a jury and found guilty. Their appeal is taken from the judgment of conviction. But one point is made upon this appeal and that is that the evidence is insufficient as to any of the defendants to justify the conviction. The defendants concede that the instrument found in the car was a blackjack as defined by the Dangerous Weapons Control Law of 1923, as amended (Deering’s Gen. Laws, 1937, vol. 1, Act 1970, p. 993 [Stats. 1923, p. 695]).

The evidence shows that on the night of November 15, 1942, there was a “free for all” fight at a dance hall at Indepencia, a small locality in Orange County; that most of the persons who attended the dance were Mexicans; that a great number of the young men wore “Zoot suits.” According to the testimony of the defendants, they arrived at the dance just a few minutes before the fight started. All three admitted being involved in the fight. Two of them bore cuts and all

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three pleaded guilty to a charge of disturbing the peace arising out of the fight there that night. When that fight ceased, the defendants, apparently by common design, returned to the automobile in which they had arrived. The automobile belonged to and was driven by the defendant -Monteverde. As they were driving away from the scene they were stopped by officers, arrested, and a blackjack was taken from the ear. At the time they were arrested Monteverde and Felix were riding in the front seat. The blackjack was lying directly under Monteverde’s knees on a rubber mat on the floor. It was covered with blood. Felix’s hand was bleeding profusely. Defendant Anaya, who was seated in the back seat of the ear, “had blood all over him.” There was an empty bottle in the front seat of the car on the right-hand side which also had blood on it.

It is appellants’ contention that the evidence is not sufficient to show a joint possession or control of the blackjack by all of the defendants so as to support their joint conviction of the crime charged; that the circumstances surrounding the existence of the blackjack in the car in question were “consistent with many reasonable theories of innocence of the defendants.”

There was ample evidence to have justified the court in concluding that a blackjack was used at the fight by defendant Felix. One witness testified that he (the witness) was seated in his ear just outside the dance hall; that “There was a big bunch arguing and I recall that Arthur (Felix) was in the middle of it. There was a young girl asking him not to fight. She says, ‘Don’t fight’, and he says, ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me. I want to whip the man here’. He wanted to strike a middle-aged man. ...” The witness then testified: “Well, the lights were put out and then the bunch of young boys that were there in the group scattered, and glass was heard broken, and then at that time I got out of my car and I noticed about six yards away from me that there was a man on the ground, they were stabbing him like this (indicating), a downward motion. I could see that he had an iron, a piece of iron of some kind, but I didn’t know what it was. What I did then was to try to separate them. I did that and the man that was lying on the ground got up and left. To one side of me was my brother, and then the whole bunch of them jumped on ns all of a sudden, and