People v. Parker
| Decision Date | 20 June 1963 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 8525 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Jerry PARKER, Defendant and Appellant. |
Harvey E. Byron, Los Angeles, for appellant.
Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Samuel L. Williams, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.
In six counts of an information, the defendant was accused of attempting to receive stolen property in that on six specified dates he did unlawfully attempt to buy and receive certain property, to wit, advance telephone directory supplement, believing that said property had been stolen, and did conceal and withhold said property from the owner, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph (Company), believing that said property had been stolen.
Trial by jury was waived. By stipulation, the prosecution's case was submitted upon the reporter's transcript of the preliminary examination. Defendant did not testify. He was adjudged guilty as to the first count, and the other counts were dismissed. Probation was granted upon the condition, among others, that he pay a fine of $500. He appeals from the judgment of conviction, and from the order denying his motion for a new trial. Such order is not appealable (People v. Eppers, 205 Cal.App.2d 727, 728, 23 Cal.Rptr. 222) and the attempted appeal therefrom will be dismissed.
The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company prepares and prints, and distributes daily to its telephone information offices in the Los Angeles extended-area, supplements to its telephone directory for that area. The area is divided into six sections or subdivisions. A supplement contains new listings of subscribers who have just moved into one of the sections. The listings which are in the supplements appear later in the next directory that is published. The supplements are not available generally to the public and are classified as confidential by the telephone company--the printed words 'Confidential Records' are at the tops of the supplements. The supplements are not available for sale to customers. Each day as new telephones are installed, the telephone company sends copies of the service orders to the printer where, during the nighttime, the supplements for the six sections are printed so that at 8 o'clock the following morning the supplements can be delivered to the telephone information boards or offices in the respective sections. The employees of the printer have been instructed with respect to the secret and confidential nature of the supplements. The average cost of making a supplement for each section is $500. All employees of the telephone company who have access to the supplements are prohibited from making them available to anyone outside the telephone company.
There was evidence to the effect that the supplements might be used for the purpose of telephone solicitation of sales of certain commodities; that persons who engage in the business of soliciting sales by telephone find it advantageous to have information regarding recent 'move ins' and, by use of the supplements, to be able to call those persons within a day or two after they have moved into a new residence; that a person who uses telephone solicitation to sell commodities has an advantage over his competitors if he has a telephone list that is not available to his competitors who also solicit sales by telephone.
Mr. Meng and Mrs. Higgs were investigators for the district attorney of Los Angeles County. As a part of their investigative arrangements in this matter, he was to be known as Mrs. Higgs' husband (and was to assume the name, Mr. Higgs), and she was supposed to be a telephone operator in the information department of the telephone company. Also as a part of those arrangements, information was conveyed to defendant that Mrs. Higgs was such an employee. About May 1, 1961, defendant called Mrs. Higgs by telephone at her home in Covina, and asked her if she worked for the telephone company. She replied that she worked in the information office. He asked if she knew why he was calling her. She replied that her frined had told something about it, but friend had told her something about it, but would have to discuss it with her husband--she did not want to get involved in anything illegal. She asked defendant if he would like to meet her and her husband and discuss it. Defendant suggested that she bring her husband to the meeting. They made an appointment to meet the next day, about 2 p. m., at a bowling alley in Baldwin Park. At the appointed time and place she, Mr. Meng (who pretended to be Mr. Higgs), and defendant met and had a conversation wherein defendant said that he wanted to get supplements from the information office, and he would photograph them and return them to her so that she could replace them. He suggested that she work the night shift and that she would be able to remove the supplements and meet her husband outside a door or window and pass the supplements to her husband, who would run them to a place where defendant had set up for a photographer to take a picture of them, and then the husband, who would be a runner for the scheme, would be an old supplement and a new supplement suggested further that she take the supplements when there were two supplements in a book, that is, that she take them when the supplements 'broke,' so that there would be an old supplement and a new supplement in the book at the same time and in that way the new supplements would not be missed. He asked them to keep the matter confidential. He said that the lapse of time from the time the lists were received by him until he returned them would be an hour or an hour and a half, depending on how long it would take to make the photographs. When Mr. Meng asked if this would be against the law, defendant replied that it was not illegal, that he was only borrowing the supplements and they had no value because they were public information. He stated further that if his competitors also had the information, then the lists would not be of any value to him. He said that he would pay her or Mr. Meng $100 for each supplement or $100 a week if she arranged to get six supplements a week for him; that he had a telephone soliciting business; that he did not want to discuss business with them by telephone because he was afraid that his telephone was bugged; that he wanted to pay them in cash because he did not want any checks to be traced as they had been traced in San Francisco. They agreed to do business with him, and he gave them his telephone number.
On May 4, 1961, about 8:08 a. m., Mr. Meng telephoned defendant and said that he had a supplement and would meet defendant at 9 a. m. They met in front of defendant's office in Sierra Madre where Meng delivered a supplement (Exhibit 1) to defendant, and received from him in exchange therefor five twenty-dollar bills (Exhibit 1-A).
On May 8, about 10 p. m., Meng telephoned defendant and made an appointment to meet him the next morning in Monterey Park. At the appointed time and place, Meng delivered a supplement to defendant and received from him in exchange...
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People v. Chandler
...property by receiving items they believed to be stolen but that had actually been recovered by police]; People v. Parker (1963) 217 Cal.App.2d 422, 427–429, 31 Cal.Rptr. 716 [affirmed conviction for attempted receiving stolen property where items were not actually stolen].)The majority also......
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People v. Kwok
...cases involving unauthorized copies of documents. (Dreiman v. State, supra, 825 P.2d at p. 761.) In both People v. Parker (1963) 217 Cal.App.2d 422, 31 Cal.Rptr. 716 and People v. Dolbeer (1963) 214 Cal.App.2d 619, 29 Cal.Rptr. 573, the defendants devised schemes for obtaining and copying s......
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People v. Moses
...496, 503–506, 215 Cal.Rptr. 352 [attempt to furnish material for the manufacture of a controlled substance]; People v. Parker (1963) 217 Cal.App.2d 422, 426–428, 31 Cal.Rptr. 716 [attempted receipt of stolen property]; People v. Siu (1954) 126 Cal.App.2d 41, 43–44, 271 P.2d 575 [attempted p......
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People v. Kunkin
...that the lists were property of value, the court affirmed the judgment of conviction. In the similar case of People v. Parker, 217 Cal.App.2d 422, 31 Cal.Rptr. 716, the court reached a similar result, again concluding that stolen telephone subscriber lists were property of value within the ......