People v. Strahan

DORAN, J. In an information filed by the district attorney of Los Angeles County, the appellants, Wilburn Ashley Strahan and Hipolito (or Nipolito) Besada, were accused of the violation of section 288a of the Penal Code, oral copulation. Each pleaded not guilty. Trial was had and each appellant was found by a jury to be guilty as charged. Motion for a new trial was denied as to each appellant. Each was sentenced to one year in the county jail, sentence suspended, and conditional probation for two years was granted as to each defendant. Strahan and Besada join in an appeal from the judgment and the denial of a new trial.

The statement of facts as recited in respondent’s brief, are as follows:

“At 2 p. m., on July 19, Charles Glazer, a Los Angeles police officer, who was working on an off-day as a detective for May Co. and Frank Armstrong, a secret agent for May Co., went to a second floor men’s rest room at May Company’s Broadway store in Los Angeles. This rest room was open to the general public and Officer Glazer had been alerted to watch for sex perversion there.

“Officer Glazer and Mr. Armstrong went inside a utility room at the south end of the rest room. Through a partition, they could watch the interior of the lavatory. [102]He thereupon entered this commode. It was not the commode he had just left. The door was closed. Officer Glazer lay on the floor of the utility room and, looking through a crack between the door and the floor, saw two pair of feet in the commode.

[101]“At 2:15 p. m., they saw appellant Besada leave a commode, walk to a washbowl, wash his hands, look at himself in the mirror, walk away and turn so that ‘his view was looking the length of the rest room. ’ A few moments later, appellant Strahan left a commode adjacent to the one just vacated by Besada, walked to the wash basins, washed his hands and looked in the direction of Besada. Besada then entered a commode directly adjacent to the door through which Officer Glazer and Mr. Armstrong were looking. This was the first in a line of commodes and was not the one he had just left. Strahan then walked in the direction of the officers, stopped, and looked into the commode into which Besada had gone.