People v. Hendricks

PINCH, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of burglary of the second degree. He prosecutes this appeal from the judgment of conviction and the order denying his motion for a new trial.

At the time of the alleged burglary the defendant and his wife resided in Sacramento. He was in the employ of a construction company and his wife was working in a cannery. His wife’s brother, Charley Haggerty, a boy of the age of fifteen years, lived with them. In the year 1923, at the town of Gridley, the defendant had a speaking acquaintance with Raymond Cherry, of the age of twenty years, an accomplice in the alleged burglary. They later worked in a cannery at Palermo, but their acquaintanceship there was not intimate. In June, 1924, the defendant rented half of a double garage in which to keep his Oakland automobile. On the 8th of July Cherry and a lifelong friend and chum, Bob Webb, a boy of the age of seventeen or eighteen years came to Sacramento and secured employment in the cannery in "which the defendant’s wife worked. On their arrival here the defendant introduced Cherry to the owner of the aforesaid garage and Cherry rented the half of the garage not occupied by defendant’s automobile and thereafter kept his Ford automobile therein. The garage consisted of but one room with space therein for two machines.

Cherry testified that during the night of August 11th he and the defendant broke into a garage in which a Ford automobile was stored and stole therefrom a storage battery, a pump, and a sun visor and carried them to the garage in which they kept their automobiles. The defendant denied that he in any manner participated in the burglary or was present at its commission.

The defendant further testified that during the evening of August 18th he took certain persons to a place near Florin, his wife, Cherry, and Webb accompanying him; that on his return he reached home about 10 or 10:30 o’clock; that he left his wife there and then drove to the corner of

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Twentieth and F Streets, where he parked his automobile, arriving there about 10:45, Cherry, Webb, and Haggerty accompanying him; that he and Cherry then went to the alley between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets to look for a man to take the defendant’s place with the construction company the next day; that he did not know where this man lived except that the man had told him that he lived on that alley; that he did not find the man he was looking for; that he and Cherry had “just come to- the car” on their return from the alley when police officers arrived and took them all into custody; that on his return from the alley to the automobile Webb was in the machine with an automobile jack which he said he had taken from an automobile that night. The defendant also testified that he did some repair work on Cherry’s automobile on the evenings of August 11th and 12th and that he first saw the stolen sun visor in their garage in the evening of the latter day.