People v. Wong Wang

Sharpstein, J. Appellant was tried and convicted in the superior court of Los Angeles County upon an information charging him with having, on the eighteenth day of October, 1890, at the county of Los Angeles, willfully and unlawfully opened, carried on, and conducted a certain gambling game commonly known as Chinese pool; said gambling game being then and there a percentage game played for money, by means of and with certain devices, to wit, a billiard-table, a board, a billiard ball and cue.

[279]After appellant’s motion for a new trial had been overruled, he made a motion in arrest of judgment, one of the grounds of which was, that the court had no jurisdction of the offense charged in the information.

The information alleges that the offense was com-' mitted in the county of Los Angeles. That county embraces, with other territory, the city of Los Angeles. The offense charged is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment, and therefore the police court, if any there was, of the city of Los Angeles, if the offense was committed in said city, had jurisdiction of the offense.

Was there a police court in said city on the eighteenth day of October, 1890, the alleged date of the commission of the offense?

The act of March 18, 1885, entitled “An act to provide for police courts in cities having thirty thousand and under one hundred thousand inhabitants, and to provide for officers thereof,” provides that “the judicial power of every city having thirty thousand and under one hundred thousand inhabitants shall be vested in a police court to be held therein by the city justices, or one of them, to be designated by the mayor”; and it is made the duty of said city justices to hold said police court, and exclusive jurisdiction of all misdemeanors punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, is conferred by said act upon said police court.

Does this act apply to the city of Los Angeles? Did it have thirty thousand and under one hundred thousand inhabitants?

The act of Congress entitled “An act to provide for taking the eleventh and subsequent censuses, approved March 1, 1889,” provides “ that the enumeration required by this act shall commence on the first Monday of June, 1890, and be taken as of that date.” And it is further provided that each enumerator shall compute the enumeration of his district and prepare the returns required to be made on or before the first day of July, 1890. We know that the enumeration so made established that the city of Los Angeles had a population of