Bauer v. State, Criminal 820

• Decision Date: 08 April 1935
• Docket Number: Criminal 820
• Citation: 43 P.2d 203,45 Ariz. 358
• Parties: GEORGIE BAUER and DICK JONES, Appellants, v. STATE OF ARIZONA, Respondent
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

43 P.2d 203

45 Ariz. 358

GEORGIE BAUER and DICK JONES, Appellants, v. STATE OF ARIZONA, Respondent

Criminal No. 820

Supreme Court of Arizona

April 8, 1935

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the County of Yavapai. Richard Lamson, Judge. Judgment affirmed.

Mr Isaac Barth, for Appellants.

Mr John L. Sullivan, Attorney General, and Mr. W. Francis Wilson, Assistant Attorney General, for Respondent.

OPINION

McALISTER, J.

Georgie Bauer and Dick Jones were convicted of the crime of robbery and given an indeterminate sentence in the state prison, and they have appealed from the judgment of guilty and the order denying them a new trial.

The testimony discloses that on the afternoon of August 20, 1934 the defendants and a Mr. and Mrs. Crowe drove in the Latters' car from Flagstaff to Prescott where they arrived about 9 or 10 o'clock in the evening. As they were driving north on Montezuma Street, in front of the Palace Restaurant, the defendant Bauer asked the driver to stop, stating that she saw a friend to whom she wished to speak. She went over to the sidewalk and greeted George T. Foreman, an old man, seventy-eight years of age, as he was starting north across Gurley Street from the St. Michael Hotel. They walked on together and as they reached the Owl Drug Store corner she asked him for some money, stating that she needed it to pay for gasoline and oil on their trip back to Flagstaff, and he replied that he had no money to give her.

At this point the stories of Foreman and the defendant Bauer diverge, the former's version of the affair being substantially as hereafter stated. They went north on Montezuma Street and, as they reached a point a little below the Owl Drug Store defendant Bauer put her hand in his pocket, pulled out his purse and tried to take it away from him. He held on to it, however, as she was jerking at it and as they were scrambling over it he said to Dick Jones, who had come up close to them, "Will you help me here to take this woman away, she is trying to rob me?" He testified further:

"I still had a hold of the purse and she was jerking on the purse, and he kind of pulled me back and tore my coat and by that time Georgie had got the purse away from me, and he struck me under the chin and at that time we was in the gutter then and I stepped up on the sidewalk and he ran down the street, and there was another woman in the car and he told her to drive on. Georgie came back and gave me the seventy-five cents back. I had four dollars and seventy-five cents. She got four dollars and she gave me -- four dollars and seventy-five cents I had in the purse and she gave me back seventy-five cents and the purse."

He stated that she got in the car and drove away and that the clasps on his purse were torn off in the scuffle.

Jack Edwards, a taxi driver, sitting in his car in front of the Owl Drug Store, saw Foreman and the defendant Bauer walk down the street and a few moments later heard him say, "Help, help, I am being robbed." He jumped out of his car, ran to where they were and as he got there Dick Jones, who was wrestling with Foreman against the curb in the ditch, gave him a swing and threw him over on the sidewalk, where he sat until another man picked him up. After doing this Jones ran down the street and the woman jumped into the back end of the car and it pulled out.

A witness by the name of George Gerke testified substantially to the same things as Edwards, though he stated in addition that he saw Miss Bauer step from the car and throw a purse over on the sidewalk.

The version of the affair given by the defendant, Georgie, Bauer, a young woman about twenty years of age, who was born and reared in Prescott, was substantially this: That she had been a sporting woman for two years and prior to her going to Flagstaff in May, George Foreman had had sexual relations with her on several occasions and that he was indebted to her therefor in the sum of six dollars; that when she saw him on the street on the evening of August 20th, she left the car to speak to him about it and that after greeting each other and walking across the street together she asked him to pay her the six dollars and he replied that he had no money. She told him she had come down from Flagstaff with some folks and was going back that night and that it took quite a bit to buy gas. He stated that if she really needed money he had two dollars, whereupon she said that if that was all he could pay maybe it would help out a little. He then took out his purse, handed her two dollars and put it back in his pocket. There was, according to her testimony, no scuffle whatever between her and Foreman but a voluntary payment by him to her of two dollars. Neither was there any scuffle between the defendant, Dick Jones, and Foreman, and her statement relative to scuffling was corroborated by the testimony of the three persons who came from Flagstaff with her.

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