People v. Factor

TAPPAAN, J.,

pro

tem.

The appellant, Morris Factor, was charged by an information with the crime of robbery, duly tried before a jury, and found guilty. He appeals from the judgment entered upon the verdict and from the order denying his motion for a new trial.

The facts, as disclosed by the record, are briefly as follows: On the morning of November 2, 1931, one Anderson, a wholesale jeweler’s agent, was alone in his office in an office building in the city of Los Angeles. At about the hour of 9 :45 A. M., in response to a knock upon his office door, he unlocked and opened the door and was confronted by two men with drawn guns. They entered the office, closed the door and forced Anderson to open the safe in the office. One of the men kept Anderson covered with a gun, while the other removed jewelry to the value of some thousands of dollars from the office safe. The men were in the office for some fifteen minutes and a large electric light was lighted during a great part of the time that they were in the office. Anderson was required to sit in a chair and one of the men, who Anderson afterward identified as appellant, sat in a chair some few feet away, unmasked, while the jewelry was being removed from the safe. The robbers bound and gagged Anderson and made good their escape. One of the robbers, the one afterward identified by Anderson as appellant, carried, while in the office, a gun of somewhat unusual type, a Derringer. A gun of this type was found in appellant’s bag when he was arrested some days later in San Francisco, and the box in which the gun had been inclosed; it had the number of the gun upon it; and shells which fitted the gun were found in appellant’s trunk in his apartment in Los Angeles. Appellant, after his arrest, made various admissions to police officers which could reasonably have been construed by the jury to have been of an incriminating nature. Appellant at the trial denied that he took part in the robbery and attempted to prove an alibi. To this end appellant introduced the testi

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mony of a number of witnesses, which if the jury had elected to believe, would have tended to establish appellant's alibi. There is ample and sufficient evidence in the record to support the jury’s verdict finding appellant guilty. The question of the sufficiency of Anderson’s identification of appellant and the weight to be given to the testimony of alibi witnesses is one of fact which an appellate court is not at liberty to review upon appeal.