People v. Lewis

,ANGELLOTTI, J.

The defendant was convicted in the superior court of the county of Alameda of the offense of taking away a female under the age of eighteen years from her father, without his consent, for the purpose of prostitution (see Pen. Code, sec. 267), and appeals from the judgment pronounced on such conviction and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

The principal point made for reversal is as to the jurisdiction of the superior court of Alameda County. The information filed against defendant in said court alleged the commission of the offense in Alameda County, and it is claimed that the evidence shows that if the offense was committed by defendant, it was committed entirely in the county of San Benito, and that such evidence, therefore, fails to show any offense within the jurisdiction of the superior court of Alameda County.

The girl, who was sixteen years of age, lived at her father’s home in San Benito County, and on October 16, 1901, left her father’s home with the defendant and another female, and went with them to Oakland, by way of Gilroy and San Jose, at each of which places they remained for a few days. They arrived in Oakland, Alameda County, about October 23, 1901,

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where they continued to live in a camp-wagon, in which they had traveled from San Benito County, until about the middle of November, 1901, when, as the evidence very clearly shows, the defendant placed the girl in a house of prostitution in said city of Oakland, for the purpose of profiting by her earnings therein. The testimony of the defendant himself in this connection was such that any rational jury could not come to a different conclusion.

There was evidence sufficient to warrant the jury in concluding that the father, who was without means and had a large family, allowed the defendant to take his daughter, upon the understanding that if she suited the niece of defendant’s wife, who, he said, was then in Gilroy, she would take her to Oakland and give her a trade, and that the father never consented to her being placed in a house of prostitution. The father testified that defendant said: “Well, I guess she will send her to school and send her to learn the millinery trade.” The defendant himself testified: “I took the girl . . . from her home at San Juan by consent of her father, to better her condition; there was nothing specially spoken of in what way I should put this girl; whether in a family; a private family was spoken of; there was millinery spoken of.”