People v. Allen

WOOD, P. J.—

Defendants Paul Leroy Allen and Ann Shirley Allen were accused of unlawfully possessing heroin. In a nonjury trial they were convicted. They appealed from the judgment. Ann Shirley Allen filed a document which stated that she abandoned her appeal. Pursuant to that state-

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meat, her appeal was dismissed. The information herein alleged that defendant Paul Leroy Allen had been convicted previously of three felonies (attempted robbery, grand theft [amended to allege forgery] and forgery).

Appellant contends that the officers illegally entered his hotel room in that there was no probable cause to believe that an offense had been committed or was being committed by either defendant; that the arrest, search, and seizure were illegal and the court erred in receiving the heroin in evidence; that the corpus delicti was not established, and the court erred in receiving evidence as to extrajudicial statements of appellant.

Officer Cochran, a policeman of Los Angeles, testified that on July 7, 1960, about 11 p. m., his immediate supervisor, Sergeant Trotsky, told him and Officer Parker that a 1951 green Buick automobile, bearing license number KSW 943, had been seen on a parking lot about the same time on July 7 that a theft, from another automobile on that lot, had occurred; that Sergeant Trotsky also told him that a 1951 green Buick, very similar to the aforesaid Buick, had been seen leaving the scene of a burglary that had occurred on July 7 at an appliance store which was in the 3900 block of Sunset Boulevard; Officers Cochran and Parker cheeked the records of the Department of Motor Vehicles and found that the license KSW 943 was registered in the name of Paul L. Allen; then they checked the records at the Department of Records and Identification of the Police Department and found that a Paul Leroy Allen had been arrested numerous times for burglary, narcotics, and robbery—on one occasion he was arrested for armed robbery; those records also indicated that he had been arrested on one occasion with Shirley Ann Allen who was also known as Shirley Ann Miller; the officers checked her record at that department and found that she had been arrested for narcotics; they obtained pictures of said persons; then the officers talked with Sergeant McMonagle who told them that he had seen a 1951 green Buick, with license KSW 943, parked in the vicinity of 7th Street and Union Avenue; the officers went to that vicinity and saw a 1951 green Buick, with said license number, which was parked on a street near Union Avenue; at that time, which was about 2 a. m. on July 8, they began cheeking the hotels in that area by showing the pictures to the hotel clerks and asking them if they had seen those persons; about 3:45 a. m. they showed the pictures to the clerk at the Strand Hotel, which is at 729 South Union Avenue, and