People v. Gonzales

CRAIG, J.

The defendant was charged by information with having violated the so-called Firearms Act of June 13, 1923 (Stats. 1923, p. 696), which reads as follows:

“Section 2. On or after the date upon which this act takes effect no unnaturalized foreign-born person shall own or have in his possession or under his custody or control any pistol, revolver or other firearm capable of being concealed upon said person. ...”

A jury having found the defendant guilty as charged, a motion for new trial was denied, and this is an appeal from the judgment and order denying said motion. It is contended in appellant’s behalf that there was no evi

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dence; other than a purported confession which was introduced over his objection, that he was an unnaturalized foreign-born person, and that the trial court erred in permitting the introduction of such confession without requiring the prosecution to establish the

corpus delicti.

„ It is insisted on behalf of the People that the evidence sufficiently showed the defendant’s birth and the fact that he was not naturalized in this country, before testimony as to any alleged confession was offered.

There is no contention that the appellant was not armed, as alleged, at the time of his arrest. The only evidence which in any way tended to show that he was an unnaturalized foreign-born person consisted of the testimony of various witnesses that appellant spoke the Mexican or Spanish language/’and that he could not speak English, and that of his daughter, twenty-two years of age, who said she was bom in Mexico, that she came to this country with her father and mother when she was about five years old, and had lived here with her father since that time. She also testified her father had never attended school in the United States, and that he was unable to read the English language; that his hair was black and his complexion the same as her own. However, there is not the slightest intimation by any witness that the appellant was not born in the United States; nor is there any fact upon which to base a presumption that he was foreign born.

The precise point raised in this case was decided by the supreme court recently in