People v. Thomas

Opinion

CHRISTIAN, J.

Nelson Claude Thomas appeals from an order admitting him to probation after a jury found him guilty of grand theft in

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the taking of property from the person of another (Pen. Code, § 487, subd. 2).

Appellant contends that the court erred in denying a motion for mistrial when it developed that, after the jury had been impaneled but before the taking of testimony began, four jurors read a newspaper story which had identified the case by name and related that a codefendant had pleaded guilty and been sentenced. The press story is set out below:

Jury Picked For Purse Snatching

Jury selection in the case of Nelson Claude Thomas, 27, of Richmond, on trial for snatching an elderly woman’s purse was completed yesterday, while the man’s alleged partner has admitted the crime.

The trial of Thomas, will begin Monday in Marin Superi- or Court before Judge Charles Read Best. He is accused of armed robbery.

Another Richmond man, Larry Dobie Young, pleaded guilty in a plea bargain.

Best sentenced him to four months in jail and ordered him to enter a Veteran’s Administration hospital thereafter for treatment for drug addiction.

San Rafael police said as the pair drove by an ,87-year-old Sad Rafael woman on Fourth Street in September, one of them reached out and grabbed her purse, knocking her to the pavement.

They were arrested moments later on Highway 17.

When the article was brought to the court’s attention, the jurors were questioned separately in chambers. Eight jurors had not seen the article, but four (Flowers, Erickson, Musetti and Garcia) had. All four had recognized that the article referred to the casé which they had been sworn to try and remembered the statement that a codefendant had pleaded guilty.

Flowers acknowledged that, although she did not think she had been influenced, she might have some hesitancy “with the other one pleading guilty.” But in response to the court’s questions, she acknowledged that newspaper articles are not always correct and undertook to take the evidence “only as it comes through the witnesses during the course of this trial.”