People v. Ulibarri

DEVINE, J.

This is an appeal from a conviction entered upon a jury's verdict finding appellant and Frederick D. Funk guilty of the felony of violating section 182 of the Penal Code by conspiring to violate section 488 of the Penal Code (petty theft).

Facts

At about 11 p.m. on Friday, September 20, 1963, Officers Hurley and Dickson of the San Francisco Police Department were in a parked automobile in the 1600 block of California

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Street, San Francisco. They observed two men, later identified as Abe Raymond Ulibarri, appellant, and Funk, a co-defendant who pleaded guilty. The men approached a parking meter, meter 1665, on California Street. Funk placed his hands on the meter. The meter door swung open and the door closed, and then Funk made a motion to his rear to appellant, who was standing behind him.

A similar procedure was followed by appellant and Funk as they progressed from meter to meter down California Street. Although the officers did not see the coins drop from the meters or hear the characteristic sound of money falling, they did on several occasions observe the door of the meter opening and being closed.

The officers approached appellant and Funk and identified themselves as police, whereupon Funk struck Officer Dickson in the forehead and attempted to make a throwing motion which was blocked. Funk, managing to break away from Officer Dickson, made a throwing motion, and a shining object was observed leaving his hand and falling into the middle of the street. Officer Hurley removed from the waistband of appellant’s sport coat a gray cloth sack containing $6.65 in nickels, dimes and pennies.

The officers located the object which Funk had thrown. It was a key, capable of unlocking and locking the parking meter cash boxes in the 1600 block of California Street. The officers proceeded from meter to meter opening them and then closing each of the meters they had observed appellant and Funk open. In each instance the cash box was empty. Of all the meters on the south side of California Street, only the second meter from the intersection of California and Van Ness contained coins. This meter was the only one which had been by-passed by appellant and Funk.