People v. Devaughn

HOUSER, J.

Defendant was found guilty on a charge of grand larceny in taking personal property from the person of one Lindbloom. He has appealed from the judgment, as well as from the order of the court denying his motion for a new trial.

The evidence shows that the prosecuting witness, Lind-bloom, was employed as a car-repairer in the yards of the Union Pacific Company in the city of Los Angeles; that on the fifth day of December, 1922, he finished his work at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, when he started for a street-car to take him to his home; that before he

got

on the ear he took his pocketbook from his pocket, from which he removed his street-car fare, and immediately replaced the pocketbook in his trousers pocket; that he did not thereafter see the pocketbook until after the defendant herein was arrested. When Lindbloom left his place of employment he boarded an East Fourth Street car, paid his fare with the money which he had theretofore taken from his pocketbook, obtained a transfer, got off the East Fourth Street car at the corner of Third Street and Main Street and transferred to a Brooklyn Avenue street-car; that instead of giving the conductor of the latter car a cash fare he gave him the transfer slip which he had obtained from the conductor of the ear which he had first boarded. The evidence further shows that at the time Lind-bloom boarded the Brooklyn Avenue street-car defendant was riding thereon as a passenger, and that defendant had neither come in contact with, nor had been in the

[515]

presence of, Lindbloom until after Lindbloom transferred from the East Fourth Street car to the Brooklyn Avenue street-ear, and that thereafter defendant remained on the Brooklyn Avenue street-car only for a period of time covered by the street-car in running between Third Street and Second Street—a distance of one block. Two Los Angeles city detectives had had defendant under close per-sonal observation for a considerable space of time, including all the time that defendant was a passenger on the Brooklyn Avenue street-car, which was for a distance of about twenty - blocks. From the testimony of the detectives it appears that defendant got on the rear of the street-ear and stood by the controller, where he remained at all times that he was on the street-car, and at each point where the streetcar stopped to take on passengers, as the passengers would pass by defendant, he would crowd them—the manner of the crowding being illustrated to the court and jury by witness in conjunction with another person. Defendant wore a light overcoat which had in it a slit about five inches long on the inside of the outside pocket, in which pocket defendant kept his hand. As Lindbloom entered the Brooklyn Avenue street-car and went past defendant, defendant crowded Lindbloom as he had theretofore crowded other passengers, after which he immediately put his hand in his small coat pocket and alighted from the street-car at the next street corner. Just as defendant alighted from the street-car he was arrested by the two detectives, one of whom immediately took from defendant’s said outside coat pocket the poeketbook belonging to Lindbloom and which Lindbloom had placed in his trousers pocket within a few minutes before boarding the East Fourth Street car heretofore mentioned.