People v. Nolan

ANGELLOTTI, J.

The defendant was informed against jointly with Michael Nolan, John Davis, and Bernard White-law for the crime of robbery, and, on a separate trial, was convicted and adjudged to suffer imprisonment in the state prison for the term of eight years. She appeals from the judgment and from an order denying her motion for a new trial.

It is urged on this appeal that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict. There was no claim that the appellant was present at the commission of the crime, the theory

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of the prosecution being simply that, not being present, she advised and encouraged its commission, and was therefore, under the provisions of sections 30 and 31 of our Penal Code, a principal in such crime.

The contention of appellant as to the insufficiency of the evidence is directed, as we understand it, to the proposition that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a finding that she advised and encouraged the commission of the crime.

The evidence very clearly showed that the other defendants actually committed the crime charged, and the evidence of the witness Euby Grills, taken in connection with the other circumstances of the case, was sufficient to warrant the jury in concluding that the appellant had incited the others to the commission of such crime, or, in the language of our statute, “advised and encouraged its commission.’’

It was apparent that the appellant had received information as to the presence of money and diamonds at the house of Mrs. Mathews and Mrs. Tuttle at No. 543 Haight Street, and that she was the only one of the defendants who had such information, or the means of obtaining the same. It appears that on the next day, after she, Nolan (with whom she was then living and had been so living for four years), Davis, Whitelaw, and Euby Grills dined together at a restaurant, the three men were in consultation, and Whitelaw went out to the house at 543 Haight Street, and, by a ruse, obtained admission to the house and a talk with the inmates, and that on the next day but one the three men committed the crime. Under these circumstances, the jury were not likely to believe the testimony of appellant and that of her co-defendants to the., effect that she never gave any of them any information as to the Mathews-Tuttle house. It was clear that the information of the men came through appellant, and that the testimony of appellant to the contrary was false. The innocent imparting of such information, without improper motive or intent that the same should be used by her companions in the commission of a crime, could not, of course, make appellant a party to the crime afterwards committed, but there was no claim that the information was innocently given by appellant, the sole claim being that it was not given at all by her. Under the circumstances, there is nothing unreasonable in the testimony of Euby Grills to the effect that while