People v. Courtney

• Decision Date: 29 December 1959
• Docket Number: Cr. 6750
• Citation: 176 Cal.App.2d 731,1 Cal.Rptr. 789
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Russell Guy COURTNEY and Ardella M. Courtney, Defendants and Appellants.
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 789

1 Cal.Rptr. 789

176 Cal.App.2d 731

PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Russell Guy COURTNEY and Ardella M. Courtney, Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 6750.

District Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 1, California.

Dec. 29, 1959.

Hearing Denied Feb. 24, 1960.

Morris Lavine, Los Angeles, for appellants.

Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., Elizabeth Miller, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.

FOURT, Justice.

This is an appeal by Russell Guy Courtney from a judgment wherein he was convicted of pimping and pandering and an appeal by Ardella M. Courtney from a judgment wherein she was convicted of pimping.

In an information filed in Los Angeles County, the defendants were charged with pimping and pandering in violation of Sections 266h and 266i of the Penal Code. A jury found Ardella M. Courtney (hereinafter referred to as the woman appellant) guilty of pimping as charged in Count I and Russell Guy Courtney (hereinafter referred to as the man appellant) guilty of pimping and pandering as charged.

A resume of the facts is as follows:

The man appellant first met Wanda Lee Pownall (hereinafter referred to as the victim), telephone operator, at a bar club in about 1953. He met the victim again in 1958 at another bar club. Upon leaving the latter bar the man appellant and victim went to a motel where they spent the night and engaged in sexual relations. The man appellant took the victim to her apartment about 3:00 p. m. the next afternoon. That evening the man appellant pushed his way into the victim's apartment where she and a girl friend were about to retire. The three of them stayed up all night and during the visit he struck the victim. The victim saw the man appellant about a dozen times before September 1, 1958, and during all such occasions he stated to her that she should be a prostitute for him, that she could make more money than she was then making and could take life easy.

About September 1, 1958, the man appellant came to the home of the mother of the victim where the victim had recently moved. The mother invited the man appellant into the house and gave him the telephone number where the victim could be reached. He called the victim and advised her to come home. The man appellant had told the victim that he would disfigure her as well as her mother if she did not do what he demanded. The victim came home and met the man appellant outside of the mother's house. He told her that he was going to take her to a bar to meet a man and that he needed money. She started into the house and he grabbed her and placed her in the back seat of an automobile driven by a Mr. Anderson. A Mona Poulson was seated next to Anderson. The car was driven to a bar and they went inside and ordered drinks.

At the bar the man appellant told the victim that since she would not go with the person whom he had in mind and make some money that he would settle for her paycheck because he did not have enough money with him to pay the bar bill. She signed her check and delivered the same to the man appellant.

The group left the bar about 1:30 a. m. September 2, 1958, and went to a motel in North Hollywood. The man appellant engaged a single room and all four entered. In the room the man appellant forced Miss Poulson to undress and he tore the victim's dress from her. He demanded that the two women lie on the bed and engage in homosexual relations. Miss Poulson became sick. Anderson left. The man appellant attempted to have sexual intercourse with the victim after striking her. He hit Miss Poulson with his fists when she moaned. At about 4:00 or 4:30 a. m. September 2, 1958, the man appellant and the victim dressed and carried Miss Poulson to the car and all of them then drove to his apartment.

The man appellant told the victim that she was going to spend the day there, that she was not going home again. He also told her that he had some prostitutes working at his apartment and that Ardella Courtney (the woman appellant), whom he introduced as Marilyn Anderson was one of the prostitutes working for him. The woman appellant was in a bedroom on the bed. Miss Poulson was placed on a couch and the man appellant and the victim got into bed with the woman appellant where he engaged in intercourse and oral copulation with each of them until about 7:00 a. m.

The woman appellant left the apartment about noon and the man appellant and victim remained in bed until about 5:00 p. m. He told her that she was going to be a prostitute for him, that they were going to make a lot of money together; that she would not think it was so bad after she got used to it; that it was an easy way to make a living; and that he had been making his living off of women of such types for quite some time.

The woman appellant returned to the apartment and made a telephone call. The victim overheard a conversation between the woman appellant and Miss Poulson with reference to a date they had made for the victim between 5:00 and 5:30 o'clock and wherein it was stated that the person she was to meet would be all right to break her into prostitution. The man appellant entered the bedroom and told the victim to take a shower and to put on some makeup, that she had a date arriving shortly. He stated to her that she was going to be a prostitute and there was nothing she could do about it. A male person by the name of 'Mannie' arrived and the man appellant attempted to convince the victim that she should engage in sexual intercourse with 'Mannie.' The victim at first refused and then was struck by the man appellant. The man appellant hid in a closet close by and Miss Poulson entered the bedroom and introduced 'Mannie' to the victim. They engaged in sexual intercourse and 'Mannie' left $20 on the dresser and departed. The man appellant came out of the closet laughing, picked up the $20 and said, 'now, that wasn't so bad, was it?' The victim never saw the $20 again.

About 10:00 p. m. of that same evening the man appellant told the victim to get dressed that he was taking her to a date. The man appellant left the room and the woman appellant told the victim that when she went to the date's apartment she was not to ask for any money before or after, that the man she was going to see would give her the money which would be about $35.

The man appellant drove the victim to her mother's house for a change of clothes. The mother noticed that there was a big bruise on the side of the face of her daughter, that her ear was swollen and there were fingermark bruises on each of her arms. The man appellant then drove the victim to an apartment house, pointed out an apartment and directed the victim to enter. The victim walked into the apartment, where she engaged in an act of sexual intercourse with the person who occupied the apartment and he gave her some folded currency. The victim dressed, departed and gave the money to the man appellant. The man appellant and the victim returned to his apartment where they and Miss Poulson slept on the bed in the bedroom.

About 3:00 p.m. the next day, September 3, 1958, the victim heard the woman appellant make several telephone calls, one of which was to a hotel in Beverly Hills where a male person was paged and a date made for such person and the woman appellant for around 10:00 that evening. Another call was made to another hotel by the woman appellant and a date was made for around 2:00 a.m.

The man appellant, having gone out, returned and stated that the woman appellant and Miss Poulson were going to Las Vegas. The woman appellant stated that she had made dates and that something would have to be done about it. The man appellant suggested that the victim assume the engagements which had been made by the woman appellant. The woman appellant placed three telephone calls during one of which the victim overheard the woman appellant give a fair description of the victim and there then followed a discussion of price and an agreement thereon. The woman appellant wrote out a notation, 'Morrie Friedman, Cr. 47727, Room 524' on a piece of paper and handed it to the man appellant who gave it to the victim after he had written thereon 'call 2:15 or 2:30.'

The man appellant drove the woman appellant and Miss Poulson to the airport where the two women took an airplane to Las Vegas. The man appellant then took the victim to a club in Beverly Hills to meet the person with whom a date had been made. That person did not make his appearance and the man appellant drove the victim to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The man appellant instructed the victim to collect $50 from the man she was to meet at the Beverly Hills Hotel and then to call another hotel. The man appellant left the victim at the Beverly Hills Hotel and departed. She waited in the lobby of the hotel for 15 or 20 minutes and then left.

The man appellant called the victim at her home the next day, September 4, 1958, and stated that he calculated that she should have over $200 and he wanted and needed the money. She stated that she did not have the money, that she did not 'turn the tricks at all' and he thereupon referred to her as a liar.

On September 5, 1958, the man appellant called the victim at her telephone service job and told her in effect that even though she had not engaged in sexual intercourse with the persons arranged for, he could have, but for her, sent someone else who could have made the money and that therefore she was obligated to him to pay the money in any event. He told her that he would not kill her but that he would mark her up rather badly.

The victim had arranged through her employer at the telephone service office to have payment stopped on the check which she had given to the man appellant some days previously. The man appellant told her that she had thereby put him in an embarrassing position by stopping payment on the check because he had cashed it with a friend who wanted his money. The man appellant told the victim that if s...