People v. Smith
| Decision Date | 15 June 1956 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 5569 |
| Citation | 142 Cal.App.2d 287,298 P.2d 540 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Walter Harry SMITH and Mildred Elizabeth Anthony, Defendants, Walter Harry Smith, Appellant. |
A. H. CcConnell, Long Beach, for appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Atty. Gen., Robert S. Rose, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.
Having been convicted of burglary in the second degree, appellant demands a reversal of the judgment and the order denying his motion for a new trial. He maintains: The evidence is insufficient to support the verdict; prejudicial errors were committed in overruling his objections to the testimony of a chemist; certain photographs of his body were obtained in violation of the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Federal Constitution, and the Constitution of California, art. I, § 19; errors in instructions.
About 2:30 a. m. April 12, 1955, Officers Robertson and Miller of the Long Beach Police Department while cruising along Second Street heard falling glass on the premises of Miller Rental Company and observed a woman standing nearby. She ran south, then east through an alley, but was soon overtaken by Officer Robertson near a construction shack. The patrol car then arrived and the officers ascertained that the woman was Mildred Elizabeth Anthony, the codefendant of appellant, and had her enter their automobile. On returning to the building with the broken window pane, they observed a jagged piece of glass protruding upward and stained with a bloodlike substance. It was also on the wood of the door. After checking the building, the officers observed a 1951 Mercury automobile with its license plates so turned down as to obscure the number. It was registered to Felix Smith, brother of appellant. On its front seat the officers found a hammer of appellant and a blue leather purse containing the driver's license of Mrs. Anthony. On the purse was a napkin with dark brown stains. A closer inspection of the young woman revealed that she was bleeding from her left forefinger and her right ankle. She denied having broken the window and that the purse in the Mercury or the driver's license was hers, but asserted that she was Mildred Smith. Officer Miller had in the meantime inspected the area of the construction shack where he found a pair of lady's black leather gloves. The left glove had a hole in the seam of the left index finger on the thumb side and the part around the hole was damp with fresh blood. Mrs. Anthony denied ownership of the cut, bloodstained merchandise.
While the foregoing inspections and conversations were in progress, Mr. Miller, proprietor of the rental company arrived, examined the inside of his building and boarded the broken door inside. At 6:00 a. m. Miller returned to his office at the police officers' request, found the boards had been taken from the door and lay on the floor inside. Also, he discovered that a small muffin tin with five dollars in coin was gone from its place beneath the counter on the rental side of the room. The other side contained marine hardware and supplies. The two entrances at the front were so locked as to be opened on the outside only. The third entrance is on the side of the building where the pane was broken. Mr. Miller only had keys to the front doors.
Inspector Perle observed a triangular mark at the base of the side door. It looked like moist blood. Technician Dillon of the Long Beach Police Department lifted latent fingerprints from the triangular mark. They were found to be identical with the impression of appellant's hand. The inspector found also two Philip Morris cigarette butts on the rug. Appellant smokes that make of cigarette. Officer Dillon also took prints from a two-foot pine board found on the floor near the west door. They were the same as the impressions of appellant's middle, and little fingers. Pieces of plaster, broken from the wall board in the Miller office by the laboratory technician, were found to contain blood.
About 10:00 a. m. of the same day, Detective Parris and Officer Wishon called at appellant's apartment and were admitted. They examined him for scars and told him his car had been involved in a burglary. After some conversation on the subject, they told him that if he would come down to the Vehicle Department at the City Hall, the officers would give him an order for the Mercury. He then explained that the reason the car was in his brother's name was that he, appellant, had planned to go overseas with the Brown Drilling Company. When he called in a Ford convertible to get the Mercury, he was arrested. Evidently, the officers had concluded that he was a participant in the burglary. Thereupon, Officer Parris with the consent of appellant's wife took from the convertible a pair of trousers and a shirt in a box in the rear seat. They belonged to appellant. From the cuffs of the trousers, Officer Simonds took fragments of glass, and residual material from the shirt, and found bloodstains on both garments. He opined that the fibers taken from the shirt were the same as the rug fibers taken from the Miller rug and the particles removed from the trouser cuff were the same as the plaster taken from the wall board in the Miller office and that the brown substance on a particle of plaster removed from the Miller Rental Office was bloodstain. After the arrest, Officer Parris noticed fresh, slight cuts on appellant's right palm and right shoulder.
Appellant contends that such evidence is insufficient to support the judgment. He argues first that where circumstances that are relied upon as proof of guilt are equally compatible with innocence as with guilt, there is a failure of proof, citing People v. Newland, 15 Cal.2d 678, 104 P.2d 778. That is but a small part of the holdings of that decision. The paramount feature of the Newland case is the announcement that on an appeal based upon the insufficiency of the evidence, before the verdict can be upset "it must be made clearly to appear that upon no hypothesis whatever is there sufficient substantial evidence to support the conclusion reached in the court below." People v. Newland, supra, 15 Cal.2d at page 681, 104 P.2d at page 780. Under that authority, so long as there is substantial evidence, circumstantial or direct, undenied or contradicted, the reviewing court will not reverse a judgment merely because what might be deemed equally convincing evidence has been introduced at the trial on behalf of appellant The fact that appellant explained the presence of blood on his clothes by his story of a fight near Wander Inn when he suffered a bloody nose; that the shirt and trousers in evidence are the same he wore in that fight; that he was corroborated by two persons who witnessed the fight--despite such testimony, the jury was not compelled to accept it rather than the recital of the circumstances heretofore related. Neither were the jurors compelled to accept the eloquent alibi of appellant or its cordial support by his wife who testified she was at home with her husband at the very time the Miller office was burglarized. The jury rejected the evidence presented on behalf of appellant, adopted that presented by the People and determined that he had committed the burglary. Therefore, in the absence of prejudicial error during the trial of the action, the judgment is secure.
The People called Officer Simonds for opinion testimony involving learning and experience in chemistry. The basis of appellant's objection to such testimony was that Mr. Simonds held no university degree in that science. The objection was properly overruled. The witness had held the position of laboratory technician for the past sixteen years; had studied in two midwestern universities and in two California universities; had studied the use of comparative microscopes, various substances and their composition with animal and vegetable and chemical compounds and most all the fields of chemistry and physics, had, after completing his course, taken one year in medical school. Opinions as to fibers taken from appellant's clothing and from the rug at the scene of the crime are beyond the ken of...
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