People v. Garcia

FINCH, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of burglary of the second degree. This appeal is from the judgment of conviction and the order denying a new trial. The evidence shows clearly that some person committed the burglary charged. The only ground urged for a reversal is that the evidence is insufficient to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime.

[132]

Between the hours of 8:30 in the morning and 12:30 in the afternoon of October 9, 1923, during the absence of the occupants, a Japanese residence was broken into and two watches, certain jewelry, two men’s suits of clothes, an overcoat and a valise were stolen therefrom. About the middle of the same month the defendant, by occupation a plumber, entered a restaurant and sold one of the watches to a man sitting at one of the tables therein for fifteen dollars. In the early part of December, the defendant pawned the other stolen watch for fifteen dollars in a pawnshop in Oakland. No trace was discovered of the other stolen property. The defendant admitted that he sold the one watch and pawned the other as stated. Appellant correctly states that mere unexplained possession of the stolen property is not sufficient to connect the defendant with the commission of the burglary. The question is whether such possession and the defendant’s explanation thereof and his acts and conduct relative thereto are sufficient proof of guilt.

When arrested, the defendant said that he had purchased the watches from a Mexican named Prank Gonzales for thirty dollars; that he had roomed with Gonzales “for some length of time”; that he did not know where Gonzales then was or his occupation or how he could be found. The defendant was living at the Eagle Hotel, less than three blocks from the scene of the burglary, during all of October, 1923. At the trial the defendant testified that he purchased the watches from Gonzales in the latter part of October; and that he had known Gonzales but fifteen or twenty days prior to the purchase, having seen him but two or three times. In answer to questions put to him by his attorney, he testified as follows: “Q. Now tell us in your own words your conversation in your meeting with this man. A. I just met him on the corner and he asked me if I want to buy those watches. ... I asked him how much he wanted for those watches, and he said thirty dollars for both of them; then I asked him if those were his property, belonged to him. He said ‘Yes.’ . . . Q. Now did he tell you how he come to have a small watch? A. All he told me was, this fellow, the two watches belong to him. The little one was his wife’s, and the larger one belong to him. Q. Did he tell you why he wanted to sell them? A. All he said was he needed money. Q. Did he say anything about wanting to get the