People v. Rios

[621]

MOORE, P. J.

Appellants and one Enriquez were convicted of having feloniously given and administered heroin to one Geraldine, a minor seventeen years of age, in violation of the Health and Safety Code. Rios and Hayes now demand a reversal of the judgment on the grounds of insufficiency of the evidence and error in admitting certain testimony.

It is not disputed that Geraldine was born October 7, 1935. The heroin was administered June 4, 1953. The original information was filed September 3 and the verdicts were returned November 11, 1953. She visited with all three men in May or June of the same year in the trailer of Rios in Montebello. That previously defendants had used heroin was testified to by Geraldine. Appellants contend that there is no proof that the substance injected into the girl’s arm was heroin. The facts proved are that she testified that defendants emptied a capsule of brown substance into a teaspoon, added water, heated the solution over a match, drew it into an eye-dropper with a hypodermic needle attached, and injected it into her arm and their own. They referred to the brown solution as “H”—a common term used to denote heroin. Geraldine testified that immediately following the injection she felt a flash and became ill but that such illness became milder with repetition; that of the 30 injections of heroin she had received, defendants administered 22 of them. When arrested, the officers observed needle marks in her arms and they found a spoon, eye-dropper and hypodermic needle in the house she occupied. Officer Saulsbury testified that the method described by Geraldine is that customarily pursued by addicts of heroin and that the flash and illness resulting from the administration of heroin is common to those who commence the use of that narcotic. Such evidence alone is sufficient to support the conviction.

(People

v.

Candalaria,

121 Cal.App.2d 686, 690 [264 P.2d 71];

People

v.

Tipton,

124 Cal.App.2d 213, 216 [268 P.2d 196].) But besides the testimony of Geraldine, the officers testified that at the time of the arrest, they found three capsules in a magazine stored in the rack in her apartment. These capsules were found by the officer Cromp, police chemist, to contain heroin.