People v. Manchell

KOFORD, P. J.

Defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction of the crime of grand theft. The appellant was employed by Harley S. Tyler and W. H. Price, copartners, to manage a water circus which was a part of a Labor Day celebration for the Firemen’s Benefit Fund of Fresno in 1927. He was employed on a weekly salary plus a percentage of profits. He was entrusted with funds for the purpose. At the conclusion of the affair the appellant left for his employer a brief statement of his accounts and a sum of money which purported to be the entire balance in his hands belonging to said Tyler and Rice. Then he left the city, giving a false address. The amount thus left proved to be several hundred dollars short. He was arrested ten days later in Wichita, Kansas, on a telegraphic felony warrant from Fresno, but was there booked on a charge of vagrancy and released on a $1,000 bail bond. He forfeited the bail and departed. In October he was located in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was arrested and returned to Fresno for trial. The evidence upon which appellant was convicted showed that the particular kind of grand theft of which he was guilty was embezzlement.

The charging part of the information upon which appellant was tried reads as follows:

“The District Attorney for the County of Fresno, State of California, hereby accuses Lee Manehell of a felony, to-wit: Grand Theft in that the said Lee Manchell on or about the sixth day of September, nineteen hundred and twenty-seven at and in the said County of Fresno, and State of California, unlawfully took the property of Harley S. Tyler and W. H. Rice, consisting of $373.72 in lawful money of the United States, of the value of $373.72 in gold coin of the United States.”

Appellant did not demur to the information, but he claims now on this appeal that the information is insufficient in not stating exactly with what kind of grand theft he was charged. He claims this must be done in order to comply with Penal Code, section 950, subdivision 2.

The point is without merit. The information states the time, place and from whom the money was stolen. As to

[790]

the manner of stealing the money, it is provided in Penal Code, section 952 (as amended Stats. 1927, p. 1043), that “in charging theft it shall be sufficient to allege that the defendant unlawfully took the property of another.” Such an information has been held sufficient under the present code sections.