Jones v. State, A--17149
| Decision Date | 06 March 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. A--17149,A--17149 |
| Citation | 507 P.2d 1267 |
| Parties | June Maxine JONES et al., Appellants, v. The STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma |
Appellants, June Maxine Jones, Emma Mae Miller Knox and Glenda Scott, hereinafter referred to as defendants, whose cases were consolidated for trial and whose cases are here consolidated for purposes of appeal, were charged, tried, and convicted in the District Court of Washington County, for the crime of Grand Larceny. The three defendants were sentenced to serve a term of six (6) months in the state penitentiary in accordance with the verdict of the jury, and from said judgment and sentence a timely appeal has been perfected to this Court. Affirmed.
At the trial, Barbara Herrington Cooper, manager of the Lazy H. Western Store in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, testified to the events of March 5, 1971, which were the basis of this case. Those events, as related by Mrs. Cooper, are as follows: At approximately 5:00 P.M. three females entered the Western Store. One of the three asked to see some shirts, and a clerk, Kathy Sagel, went to the shirt section of the store. All three females then went directly to the men's coat department where Mrs. Cooper met them and asked if she could be of help. When they replied negatively, Mrs. Cooper walked to the adjacent boot department where she remained, observing the three women. When they were through looking at and handling the coats, one woman yelled a remark about parking money and the three women immediately ran out of the store. Suspicious of a bulky purse carried by one and the apparent gain in weight of another, Mrs. Cooper quickly followed them, and noted the color, make, and tag number of the car in which the three left the scene. Mrs. Cooper then returned to the store where her employees produced empty hangers on which leather coats had previously been hanging. Mrs. Cooper called the police and reported that three negro women had shoplifted three leather coats and that they had left in a red and white Oldsmobile convertible with license number VG 3955. Within a short time, less than thirty minutes, Mrs. Cooper was called to report to the police station where she identified the three defendants as the women who had been in the store and had left in the described car. Mrs. Cooper subsequently correctly identified the three defendants, both at the preliminary hearing and in court at the time of the trial.
Testimony by Mary Kathleen Sagel, employed at the Lazy H. Western Store, and present on the day in question, confirmed Mrs. Cooper's statement of the events.
Testimony by John L. Evans, Charles Randle and Lenard Ames, all police officers employed by the Bartlesville Police Department, established the following facts relative to the incident. Approximately 5:15 P.M., Sergeant Evans and Patrolman Randle received a police radio dispatch informing them of the shoplifting and describing the three women, the goods taken, and the car together with its license number. About five minutes later Patrolman Randle observed one of the women changing from the red and white Oldsmobile the dispatch had described to a green station wagon. Randle then transmitted a radio message to stop the green station wagon because he had observed this above mentioned change of cars. On the basis of these two radio transmissions Sergeant Evans stopped the green station wagon and as soon as Patrolman Randle arrived, the women were placed under arrest and the car was searched. The search produced three leather coats matching the description given in the dispatch. The women were taken to the police station along with the coats where Patrolman Randle gave the coats directly to the booking officer, Ames. Ames tagged the coats and locked them in an Evidence Locker.
This appeal has been brought upon two propositions. First, it is urged that Sergeant Evans had no probable cause to arrest the defendants and as a result of this illegal arrest the related search was illegal, the coats thereby gathered were inadmissible as evidence and error was committed when indeed the coats were admitted into evidence. It is also contended that a proper identification of the coats, to be established by a complete chain of evidence, was not proven and this too made the admission of the coats error. At the basis of the illegal search and seizure alleged by the defense, is the lack of probable cause. Defense argues that probable cause cannot be created by a police radio dispatch. Speaking to this precise problem, McKay v. State, Okl.Cr.,...
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