People v. Miller

SHINN, P. J. In a jury trial, Jean Pierre Miller was convicted of two offenses of second degree burglary and probation was granted on condition that he serve one year in the county jail. Miller appeals from the judgment.

[660]There was evidence of the following facts. On the morning of April 2, 1958, two cameras were found to be missing from the Baldwin-Gruber camera store in Los Angeles; on the morning of April 6th, an expensive camera and some camera accessories were found to be missing from the Bel Air camera store in Westwood. In each case, entry had been effected by throwing a rock through a display window.

At about 3:30 a. m. on the morning of April 7th, Officer Bolander of the Beverly Hills Police Department was on duty in a patrol car at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. He saw a 1941 Plymouth sedan going west on Wilshire; the car had no front license plate and no 1958 tag on the rear license plate. There were two men in the Plymouth, Miller and his codefendant Lowell Akui, who subsequently pleaded guilty to the Baldwin-Gruber burglary.

Officer Bolander testified that as he approached the car the occupants appeared to be struggling. He asked them if they owned the car.and both men denied owning it. At Bolander’s request, Miller and Akui alighted from the car and the officer looked for the registration slip but did'not find one. He observed a rubber glove on the front seat, four yellow pages from a classified telephone directory stuck over the visor on the passenger’s side, a box of tools on the back seat and seven rocks on the floorboards of the car. (The pages from the telephone directory contained a list of camera stores in the Los Angeles area.) When asked why the rocks were in the car, appellant told Bolander that the car had bad brakes and he used them to block the wheels. Upon checking with the Department of Motor Vehicles, the officer ascertained that the license plate on the Plymouth belonged to another car which was registered to Akui. He then took Miller and Akui into custody.

Captain Ray W. Borders of the Beverly Hills Police Department testified that he had a conversation with appellant on the morning of April 7th at the police station. When asked what he was doing in Beverly Hills at 3:30 a. m., Miller replied that he was looking for a camera store to burglarize. Appellant then told the officer that he and Akui had recently burglarized camera stores in Los Angeles and Westwood and that he was keeping the stolen merchandise in his apartment. At the request of Captain Borders, Miller signed a typewritten statement giving the officers permission to search his apartment. Borders went to the premises where