People v. Renwick

CONREY, P. J.

Defendant was convicted of the crime of robbery and now appeals from the judgment and from an order denying his motion for a new trial. The grounds of appeal are that the evidence was insufficient to justify the verdict, and that the court erred in some of its rulings upon objections to offered testimony.

[775]

At between 7 and half-past 7 o’clock on the evening of February 28, 1916, three masked men went into a butcher-shop on Stephenson Avenue, in the City of Los Angeles, no other persons being present at the time except the proprietor, Mrs. Rosenbusch. They locked Mrs. Rosenbuseh into a refrigerator, took from the till the money (about five dollars) that was there, and speedily left the place. Mrs. Rosenbusch testified to these facts and gave some description of the young men, but the description was not sufficient to identify any of them. According to the testimony of a police officer named Raymond, who had been trailing and watching the defendant and certain other young men, one Burns came to the corner of Tenth and Los Angeles Streets at 6:35 P. M. in a Ford automobile. At that place four men, Bill Shank, Frank Shank, Fleming, and Renwiek, got into the car with Burns, and they drove east on Tenth Street. According to the testimony of Earl "Whitney, employed at a garage on Stephenson Avenue, about six hundred feet east from the Rosenbusch shop, a Ford automobile coming from the east stopped near the garage at between 7 and 7:15 P. M., where Renwick and Frank Shank got out of the machine and walked west toward the Rosenbusch shop, and Burns was driving the machine. As they walked along, Renwick signaled for the machine to follow and the machine passed along in the same direction. It is in evidence that that is a much frequented highway, and there is no evidence that these were the only persons who passed along the street at about the same time.

Over objections made by the defendant, one Gronsky was permitted to testify that he was the owner of a Ford machine which he left at the corner of Ninth and Spring Streets at 4 o’clock that afternoon; that the machine was gone when he returned there to get it at about 8 o’clock P. M., and that he found it at another place some hours later. There is no evidence identifying Gronsky’s automobile with the one in which the defendant was seen by the other witnesses, except that all three of these witnesses describe a Ford machine which was not new, and each witness states that the isinglass was out of the back of the machine which he saw. One Frank Richards testified that at about a quarter after 7 he passed along Stephenson Avenue opposite the Rosenbusch shop and his attention was