People v. Young
| Decision Date | 20 November 1961 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 7803 |
| Citation | 197 Cal.App.2d 129,17 Cal.Rptr. 283 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Willie YOUNG, Defendant and Appellant. |
Willie Young, in pro. per.
Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., Elizabeth Miller, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.
Appellant was convicted of violating section 11500 Health and Safety Code (possession of heroin). Appellant was also charged with a prior narcotics conviction, which was found to be true, and that he had servied a term in the state prison therefor. Probation was denied and appellant was sentenced to the state penitentiary. He has appealed from the judgment.
On February 4, 1961, at approximately 2:40 p. m., Officers Gillette, Beauchine and Green of the Los Angeles Police Department went to a hotel at 512 South Crocker Street in Los Angeles for the purpose of arresting the appellant on a misdemeanor warrant charging violation of section 148 of the Penal Code (). As Officer Beauchine was about to knock on the door of Room 33, Officer Green overheard a conversation which included the following: Officer Green thereupon peered through a hole in the door. Officer Gillette then looked through the same hole. Officer Gillette observed five people in the room, including the appellant. Mildred Young, appellant's wife, was standing in the room with her right arm extended and Maggie Foster had a belt wound around it between the elbow and the shoulder. Appellant was heating something in a receptacle which resembled the cap of a wine bottle, over a cigarette lighter. After heating the contents of the receptacle he placed it and the lighter on the table and momentarily disappeared from the officer's view. He returned in a few moments with an eye dropper which had an hypodermic needle attached to the end of it. Appellant emptied a substance from a small balloon into the receptacle, stirred it with the point of a knife blade, placed the point of the needle into the receptacle, holding it there for a few moments, and apparently squeezing the rubber end of the eye dropper. He then made a movement toward Mildred Young as if to insert the needle into her arm. In the opinion of Officer Gillette the appellant and the other occupants of the room were engaged in 'giving and taking a fix' of narcotics. Officer Gillette thereupon kicked the door in. As he entered the room he observed appellant make a throwing motion toward the window, but he did not see what he threw. He simply saw the appellant pull back the curtain and throw whatever he had in his hand. The officer looked out of the window and saw what appeared to be an eye dropper and some other small items on the roof of a car parked in a lot below the window. After the occupants of the room were arrested, Officer Gillette directed another officer to recover the articles on the roof of the car, which proved to be an eye dropper and hypodermic needle. Officer Gillette seized the bottle cap, which was still on the table. It contained approximately one-half grain of powder which proved to be heroin. The officer examined the arm of each person in the room and found marks which in his opinion indicated that each of the persons had received an injection of narcotics.
Appellant denied having had any part in the preparation of a fix and also denied having thrown the eye dropper and hypodermic needle out of the window. Others in the room gave testimony which, if believed, would have tended to exonerate him.
In seeking a reversal appellant contends that the evidence is insufficient to support the judgment in that since the police officer testified that he did not see the object thrown out of the window by the appellant there was no proof of his possession of narcotics and that under the rules of circumstantial evidence the existence of a hypothesis other than guilt leaves the court with the obligation to acquit the appellant, and that the judge erred in not accepting the testimony of appellant and his witnesses which exculpated him from guilt. We find no merit in appellant's argument.
The offense of unlawful possession of narcotics consists of two elements: (...
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