People v. Williams

SHENK, J. The defendant was convicted on a charge of larceny from the person. She has appealed from the judgment entered upon a verdict.

There is no contention that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict. The principal question presented is whether the court committed prejudicial error in permitting, over the objection of the defendant, evidence relating to prior attempts by the defendant to commit similar offenses. It is claimed that the evidence was inadmissible because it amounted to proof of offenses not charged in the information.

The prosecution sought to prove that a coin purse, containing money and found in the defendant’s possession, was taken by her with the intent to steal it from the handbag carried by a Mrs. Henig while the latter was marketing in the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. It was shown beyond contradiction that the coin purse belonged to Mrs. Henig and that it was in the defendant’s possession when she was apprehended in the market by an officer from the police department. The defendant denied stealing the purse and testified that she stumbled over it and then picked it up from the floor of the market.

One witness testified that he and another officer assigned to work with him on pickpocket detail had been following the defendant; that he observed the defendant walk toward Mrs. Henig who was carrying some bundles and her handbag in front of her; that the defendant, as she came opposite Mrs. Henig, reached out with her left hand, opened the handbag and then passed her; that a few paces further she turned back and when she caught up with Mrs. Henig again she reached out with her left hand and took the coin purse out of Mrs. Henig’s handbag. The witness testified that he then grasped the defendant’s wrist and hand which held the coin purse, and that as he did so the defendant dropped the purse to the floor, saying at the same time, “I didn’t take it, I found it on the floor.”

The question is whether the trial court erred in admitting in evidence the further testimony of the officers that on the morning of the same day they had received from Kress’ store a description of a woman who was suspected of pickpocket operations; that they followed the defendant, who answered the description, for about twenty minutes prior to the occurrence in the Grand Central Market, and [502]that during that period they saw her open in a similar manner another woman’s purse in one of the five and ten cent stores in the same neighborhood, but that before the defendant had caught up again with the woman the latter had closed her handbag; that a second attempt of the same nature occurred in another of the stores before the defendant entered the Grand Central Market.