Neighbors v. People
| Decision Date | 03 March 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 22744,22744 |
| Citation | 168 Colo. 319,451 P.2d 264 |
| Parties | Raymond Andrew NEIGHBORS, Plaintiff in Error, v. The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Defendant in Error. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
B. J. O'Leary, Colorado Springs, for plaintiff in error.
Duke W. Dunbar, Atty. Gen., John P. Moore, Deputy Atty. Gen., Paul D. Rubner, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.
Neighbors was convicted by a jury of the crimes of burglary first degree and larceny of two rifles of a value of $85. As a result of these two related convictions he was then sentenced to separate terms in the state penitentiary, the terms however to be served concurrently. By this writ of error Neighbors now seeks reversal of the judgment and sentence thus entered.
In support of his contention that his conviction should be reversed Neighbors argues that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the verdict of the jury and that for a variety of reasons his confession was improperly admitted into evidence. Let us examine briefly the evidence adduced by the People upon trial.
The Carneys and Neighbors lived in the same apartment house, the Carneys residing in an upstairs apartment and Neighbors in a downstairs basement unit. Upon trial Mrs. Carney testified that the two rifles 'disappeared' from their apartment on or about Thanksgiving Day, 1965. She stated that no one had permission to remove the rifles from the Carney apartment and though she freely admitted that Neighbors on occasion had been a guest in the Carney apartment, she testified that he had not been a guest in their apartment during the Thanksgiving Day holiday when the aforementioned rifles disappeared. There was evidence that the two rifles--which Mrs. Carney identified upon trial as being the rifles which disappeared from their apartment- --were delivered by Neighbors a few days after Thanksgiving Day to the owner of a nearby bar, and that Neighbors later returned to this particular bar and stated to the bartender then on duty that 'there were two guns in the office that were his, that he was trying to sell them, and he wanted to know if I had time to get them because he wanted to sell them.'
It was at about this juncture that the Colorado Springs police moved into the case. Upon trial two police officers testified that they interrogated Neighbors about the missing rifles and that Neighbors thereupon gave the police a written statement wherein he confessed stealing the two guns here in question. Specifically, in that statement Neighbors states that on the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving Day at about two o'clock in the afternoon he saw the Carneys leave their apartment, and he then went over and 'tried their back door.' This door was unlocked, according to Neighbors, and he then went inside the Carney apartment 'looking for something to take so I could pawn it.' Neighbors went on to state that he found two guns in a closet and that he 'took the guns out with me and took them to my place.'
The foregoing is believed to be a fair summary of the incriminating evidence offered by the People upon trial of this matter. Neighbors offered no evidence in his own behalf and--deciding to exercise one of his constitutional rights--he elected not to testify.
In our view the evidence is legally sufficient to support the verdict of the jury. And this would be true even if there had been no confession introduced into evidence. In other words, the testimony of Mrs. Carney and that of the bartender was sufficient to require submission of the case to the jury as to...
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People v. LaRosa
...only be slight,” but it must be sufficient “to convince the jury that the crime is real and not imaginary.” Neighbors v. People, 168 Colo. 319, 322, 451 P.2d 264, 265 (1969). ¶ 16 The People state, and our independent research confirms, that the earliest reported case applying the corpus de......
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...a result, the Corpus delicti is not corroborated as the majority asserts and the conviction should be reversed. See Neighbors v. People, 168 Colo. 319, 451 P.2d 264 (1969); Owen v. People, 155 Colo. 19, 392 P.2d 163 (1964); Meredith v. People, 152 Colo. 69, 380 P.2d 227 (1963); Martinez v. ......
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...outside sources, or may be in the form of one accomplice corroborating another." In similar fashion, we held in Neighbors v. People, 168 Colo. 319, 322, 451 P.2d 264, 265 (1969), that the rule requiring the corroboration of an accused's confession is satisfied by "other and independent evid......
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