People v. Griffin

LANGDON, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of robbery and appeals from the judgment. The crime with which he was charged was robbing a bank at Clovis, Fresno County, California, on February 5, 1924, of approximately twenty-eight thousand dollars. The robbery occurred as follows: A man entered the bank and presented a twentrdollar bill to Thomas Howison, an employee of the bank, and asked for small change. While the change was being counted out, the second robber entered the bank and pointing a revolver at Howison, commanded him to throw up his hands. Howison’s hands were then tied with a rope and he was locked in a vault, which was looted. The vice-president of the bank, Mr. R. R. Rayburn, returned from his luncheon before the robbers left the bank. A revolver was pointed at him and he was ordered to stand behind some filing eases. He stepped behind the cases until the robbers left the bank and then ran to the front door in time to see an automobile speeding away. He ran down the street calling to bystanders to stop the automobile, but the men escaped.

At the trial, Rayburn identified the defendant as the man who had pointed the revolver at him. Howison was not able to positively identify the defendant as one of the men who participated in the robbery, but stated that he resembled the man who had asked for the change. He stated that he had not noticed this man particularly be

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cause there was nothing to arouse suspicion when he entered, and later Howison’s attention was upon the man who held the revolver and commanded him to throw up his hands and afterward led him into the vault.

Appellant contends that the identification is not sufficiently positive to warrant the conviction. "With this contention we do not agree. The identification was positive by the witness Eayburn, even though Howison hesitated to be absolutely positive. Furthermore, there is a long and convincing chain of circumstantial evidence before the court, to all of which appellant is strenuously objecting upon appeal.

Eayburn testified that as he approached the bank returning from his luncheon on the day in question he observed an automobile parked parallel with the curb in .the vicinity of the bank. The engine was running and the automobile was distinguishable by the facts that it had recently been repainted and the rear window in the top had been removed, leaving a rather large opening. Eayburn and other persons testified that such an automobile was speeding through the streets of Clovis immediately after the robbery; that two men were in it at the time and one of them was in the rear seat throwing something out of this unusually large opening in the rear. Two witnesses testified that shortly after the robbery occurred and over the course the automobile was driven immediately after the robbery they found numerous “roofing tacks,” some of which were admitted in evidence. This automobile was found later in a garage in Fresno and identified and in the back part of it were found a number of roofing tacks corresponding to the tacks found upon the highway. At the time the automobile was driven into this garage, the person who drove it in signed the register: “T. T. Jones.” A number of exemplars of defendant’s handwriting were admitted in evidence and two expert witnesses testified that the person who wrote the name “T. T. Jones” upon the garage register was the same person who wrote the handwriting exemplars referred to. Photographs of all these exhibits appear in the record and it needs no expert to see immediately the ■ strikingly similar characteristics of them all. Some of the evidence objected to upon appeal was introduced to lay a