People v. Brown

LILLIE, J.-

Defendant was convicted by the trial court of second degree burglary. He appeals from the judgment and order denying his motion for a new trial. Appellant does not dispute that a burglary was in fact committed; he contends only that the evidence is insufficient to connect him with the crime.

After parking his 1956 Buiek in his garage around 10 p.m., Sunday, January 17th, John R. Johnson closed the overhead garage door but did not lock it. The next afternoon, January 18th, he observed the garage door up, and when he opened his ear door there was no light; the car radio was missing, the hood was up slightly, the wires were cut and the battery was tilted to one side.

The following day, around 1 p.m. Officer Jackson saw defendant standing at the rear of an automobile; the trunk of the ear was open and inside were three automobile radios. The officer asked him to whom the radios belonged; defendant said they were his, that he had bought them at a wrecking junk yard around 160th and Main, but he had no receipt for them because although the man from whom he bought them made one out he did not take it. He also told the officer he was not sure he could show him the junk yard because he went to quite a few places before he bought the radios. Asked what he was doing with them, defendant said one belonged to his car and he was taking parts from the second radio to fix it; and the third was a Ford radio which he bought for a friend, but he did not know where the friend then was. One of the radios, a Sonomatie automobile radio (Ex. 1) was identified by Johnson as having the appearance of the one taken from his car.

Officer Moreller went to Johnson’s garage and examined the Buiek; he found the radio missing, the hood open, the wires to the battery cut, the battery tilted and the voltage regulator missing. Under the dash board he saw a short piece of wire (Ex. 2), one end of which was attached to a fuel coupline. This piece of wire was examined by a forensic chemist and expert in comparative analysis and after conducting various experiments with the clutch wire attached

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to Exhibit 1 (the radio found in defendant’s possession) and the wire from Johnson’s car (Ex. 2), it was his opinion that the two were once one and the same in a continuous piece of wire. This and Johnson’s identification of Exhibit 1 established that the radio found in defendant’s possession was the one stolen from Johnson.