People v. Wang

BARNARD, P. J. The defendants were charged with robbery, it being charged that on August 7, 1955, they took $526 from one Mimms. In a second count they were charged with assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, alleging an assault on Mimms on the same day. A jury found them guilty of robbery in the first degree on the first count, and guilty as charged in Count II. A motion for new trial was denied and they were sentenced to imprisonment, the sentences on Count II to run concurrently with those imposed as to Count I. They have appealed from the judgments and from the orders denying their motions for a new trial.

It appears that the defendants stayed at a café and motel at Searchlight, Nevada, known as the El Rey Club, from August 5 to August 7, 1955, having registered under the name of Wayne. Mr. Mimms, a prospector and dealer in used automobiles, was in a bar at the El Rey Club during the evening of August 7. While he was discussing mining with another patron, Mrs. Wang joined in the conversation. A little later she and Mr. Wang had a conversation with Mimms about mining, during which she showed Mimms a “hunk of tungsten” in which he expressed great interest. About 9 o’clock that evening they left the El Rey and got into the Wangs’ car. Mr. Wang was driving, Mrs. Wang sat on the right-hand side, and Mimms sat in the middle. Mrs. Wang [348]testified that she had on a bathing suit, a white beach jacket, and that she did not think she was wearing any shoes.

Mr. Mimms testified that the next thing he remembered after getting in the car with the Wangs was coming-to on the desert at about 5 o’clock the next morning. He was then seriously injured and his money was gone. When he recovered consciousness he crawled to the edge of United States Highway 66, where he was picked up by a passerby. This passerby testified that Mimms was in a “very bad condition” and had blood all over him; that he asked Mimms if he had been hit by a ear and Mimms replied “No,” that a man and woman had beaten him up and robbed him of over $500. The passerby took him to a hospital in Needles.

The point where Mimms was picked up was approximately 7 or 8 miles west of Needles, 50 miles from Searchlight, and a mile or so east of the point where the road from Searchlight joins Highway 66. Officers who went to the scene early that morning found a blood-stained depression in the sand 161 feet from the highway, where the assault had apparently taken place. Near the depression there were “scuffle marks,” and a good sized rock which is largely covered by bloodstains. Some blood was found on nearby twigs, there were spatters of blood on a paper found in a bush at the scene, and blood on a pink kleenex, which was of the same fabrication and color as that of a box of kleenex found in the car of the defendants at the time of their arrest. All of this blood was human blood of the same type as that of Mimms. There were tire marks near the highway where a vehicle had driven in and backed out again, apparently for the purpose of turning around. There were three sets of footprints going from the highway to the depression, and two sets of footprints returning to the highway, one of them a set of bare footprints. The soil was such that plaster easts could not be taken of the footprints.