People v. Walters

• Decision Date: 17 March 1967
• Docket Number: Cr. 12350
• Citation: 249 Cal.App.2d 547,57 Cal.Rptr. 484
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Joe Charles WALTERS and Lloyd Sancho, Jr., Defendants and Appellants.

Page 484

57 Cal.Rptr. 484

249 Cal.App.2d 547

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Joe Charles WALTERS and Lloyd Sancho, Jr., Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 12350.

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

March 17, 1967.

Rehearing Denied April 4, 1967.

Hearing Denied May 10, 1967.

Charles M. Berg, Beverly Hills, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for appellants.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and James H. Kline, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.

FOURT, Associate Justice.

Appellants Joe Charles Walters and Lloyd Sancho, Jr., appeal from their conviction of burglary which the jury found to be of the second degree.

The circumstances which led to their conviction are as follows: Fannie Yee and her husband owned a grocery store at 8751 S. Compton Street, Los Angeles, and on October 19, 1965, at about 7:30 p.m. Fannie Yee secured the premises, checked the burglar alarm system to be certain that all the wires were connected, and went home. The burglar alarm system is silent; if one of the wires is broken it sounds only in the company offices of U.S. Burglar Alarm and that company, in turn, notifies the owner and the police. Sometime around midnight Mrs. Yee received a call from the company registering an alarm and she thereupon returned to the store. Although none of the merchandise was disturbed or missing, she found that the wire and grille in the restroom ceiling had been broken and that the grille was hanging down. This grille, mounted flush with the ceiling, concealed a shaft two or three feet high, which went to the roof, and normally was capped by a metal cover which also had been removed.

One of the prosecution witnesses was Deputy Sheriff Ballenger who received a radio message in his patrol car at about 12:40 on the morning of October 20, 1965, and responded to the alarm immediately by proceeding to the address of the Yee market. Once there he and his partner deployed to maintain the entire building under surveillance. They observed that a car parked across the street blinked its lights twice, and they later determined that two women occupied the car which was registered to Sancho's father. A few minutes after they arrived, Officer Ballenger observed Officer Monarrez, together with appellants and one nonappealing defendant, Ross, on the roof of the building.

Officer Monarrez testified that he climbed to the roof where he found appellants and Ross. They were near a vent, the cover of which had been removed, and beside the vent stood a large box in which he found nine pillow cases and coil of rope. The vent extended from the roof to the ceiling of the market's restroom. Another rope was attached to a sewer pipe on the roof and this rope extended into and down the open vent to rest finally upon the grille with some loops of rope extending into the restroom below. A pair of pliers and a screwdriver also rested upon the grille which had been so bent or broken that a portion of it was hanging down into the restroom. Officer Monarrez used his baton to knock these tools from the grille to the restroom floor.

Walters and Sancho each testified in his own defense at the trial. Each said they met in front of a pool hall and were standing there idly talking when the police stopped to interrogate them about the riot, requested identification, and placed them in a patrol car. However, before they reached the station the officers decided to release appellants and dropped them on Compton Boulevard, admonishing them to leave the neighborhood, or they would be picked up. They walked some distance down Compton Boulevard and when they saw a police car approaching they ran up what they thought was an alley, then climbed the fence at the end and scaled the building to find themselves at the spot where Officer Monarrez ultimately discovered them. They testified further that they had observed some items lying around near the vent but denied that they made any entry or attempt to effect an entry. Their defense was that they were attempting only to avoid the police, and Walters said also that he saw two other men on the roof just before they arrived who, he felt, must have been the burglars.

Appellants contend that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the judgment, and that the court committed prejudicial error when it admitted into evidence a diagram of the market prepared by the prosecution on which the words 'point of entry' were marked but blocked over. We find no merit in these contentions.

The gravamen of a charge of burglary is the act of entry which must be accompanied by a felonious intent. The existence of the requisite intent may be inferred from circumstantial evidence (People v. Conley, 220 Cal.App.2d 296, 299, 33 Cal.Rptr. 866), and the crime of burglary is complete when an entry with the essential...