People v. Hardy

FOURT, Acting P. J. This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction of grand theft (§ 487.1, Pen. Code).

In an information filed in Los Angeles on November 15, 1967, appellant herein and Clarence Williams were jointly charged with grand theft in that they did on October 16, 1967, unlawfully steal the personal property of another of a value in excess of $200. Williams was also charged with five prior felony convictions and Hardy was ultimately charged with two prior felony convictions. Each defendant pleaded not guilty and denied the charged prior convictions. The cause was submitted upon a designated part of the transcript of the proceedings had at the preliminary hearing and the further testimony of the victim of the theft and the two defendants. Each defendant was found guilty as charged and [471]each of the charged prior convictions was found to be true and each defendant was sentenced to the state prison, the term as to Hardy to run consecutively to any other sentence he was then serving. A timely notice of appeal was filed by Hardy.

In brief the defendants induced one Gearring to withdraw from his bank account $445 and then defendants engaged in a bunco operation or in what is generally referred to as a “Jamaica Switch” and relieved Gearring of his money and in place thereof left him a wad of paper with a dollar bill wrapped around it in a sack. (See People v. Orndorff, 261 Cal.App.2d 212 [67 Cal.Rptr. 824] for the intricacies of “The Jamaica Switch. ”)

The defendants each testified that they had played craps with Gearring for several months prior to their arrest and that Gearring and Williams had gotten into an argument over a dice game in which Gearring had lost considerable money. Gearring in rebuttal stated that he had never seen either of the defendants before the 16th of October 1967 and that only two months before that he had been in Viet Nam.

Hardy now asserts that the evidence is insufficient to support the judgment, that his section 995, Penal Code motion should have been granted, that there was no identification of Hardy at the trial and further that section 1025, Penal Code is unconstitutional in that it requires a defendant to admit prior convictions in order to avoid imparting knowledge of the prior convictions to the trier of fact. There is no merit to any of appellant’s contentions.

We have read the complete record in this case and plainly there was more than sufficient evidence for the trial judge to find as he did. Appellant clearly was associated with Williams in a bunco operation and they stole $445 from Gearring.