People v. Rogers

FORD, J.

In a non jury trial, the appellant Rogers was found guilty of the crime of burglary in the second degree. The allegations of the information that he had suffered four prior felony convictions were found to be true. The defendant has appealed from the judgment and from the order denying his motion for a new trial.

The evidence before the trial court will be summarized. James T. Rumery, who was the chief storekeeper of the Associated Students Store at El' Camino College in Los Angeles County, testified that he locked the store at about 4:35 p. m. on Friday, August 26, 1960. He was the last person to leave. A post office substation was maintained at the store. The store was not open during the weekend. When Mr. Rumery returned on the following Monday morning and unlocked the store, typewriters, cameras, records, cigarettes and all the cash and postal money orders in stock were missing; the safe was not there. The witness identified money orders shown to him and marked as Exhibit 2 for identification as being money orders which had been delivered to the store by the United States Post Office Department. On Monday morning, he observed a

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door in the building from which a ventilation plate had been removed; the resulting opening was large enough to permit a person to pass through it.

James L. Lott, who was a maintenance man at El Camino College, testified that about 9 o’clock on Friday night he went into the store and cleaned it. There was nothing unusual about the store at that time. When he left, the premises were secured.

Donald Phillip Lechner, who was landscape supervisor at the college, testified that about 7:30 o’clock on a Sunday morning in August 1960, which might have been around the 28th, he observed an object about 20 feet from the Campus Center building; it was the safe from the bookstore. He called the officers and entered the store with them. The store was in disorder. In the building where the bookstore was located, there was a broken window; the opening “was big enough to crawl through.” Inside the building, vents of a door had been smashed.

Frank S. Northrup, a police officer for the City of Los Angeles assigned to the narcotics division, testified that he arrested the appellant at a dwelling house on East 142d Street. When the officer entered the house, he had neither a search warrant nor a warrant for the appellant’s arrest. The officers came to the vicinity of the premises about 9 p. m. on September 19, 1960. They entered the house at approximately one o’clock in the morning on September 20, 1960. It was a single family dwelling. The witness testified in part as follows: “We knocked on the door. At that time the door swung open . . . there was no door knob on the door. There was a hole at the bottom of the door that at one time apparently had held the door knob, but all there was was just a latch and hasp that held the door, but it was not together. ... I observed a man standing in the center of the living room, whom I recognized as being a party by the name of Charlie Byrd. . . . My partner and I both identified ourselves as police officers and said, ‘ Charlie, can we talk to you ? ’ . . . He said, ‘Come in.’ We entered. We said, ‘You are Charlie Byrd, aren’t you?’ At that time he stated, ‘No.’ I asked him his name and he gave me a name that I can’t recall, but he refused to admit that he was Charlie Byrd. ... I said, ‘You know we are narcotic officers, don’t you, Charlie?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ We asked him if there was any narcotics around the house. He stated, ‘No.’ . . . the defendant Rogers was in the living room also ... I observed the defendant Rogers