Stanmore v. People
| Decision Date | 15 May 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 19602,19602 |
| Parties | Willis Levi STANMORE, Plaintiff in Error, v. PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Defendant in Error. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
Willis Levi Stanmore, pro se.
Duke W. Dunbar, Atty. Gen., Frank Hickey, Deputy Atty. Gen., J. F. Brauer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Denver, for defendant in error.
Plaintiff in error, who will be referred to as defendant, was convicted of robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery and sentenced to the penitentiary for terms of 18 to 25 years on the robbery charge and 8 to 10 years on the conspiracy charge, the sentences to run concurrently. He seeks review by writ of error.
The information charges that on December 22, 1958 defendant robbed Tom A. Fortune and was then armed with a dangerous weapon, a gun, with intent if resisted to maim, kill or wound the said Fortune.
The trial was lengthy and the transcript contains extensive examination and cross-examination not essential to the present determination. We deem it necessary to set forth the essential facts only.
It appears from the evidence that on December 22, 1958 the defendant and another man entered the clothing store of Tom and John Fortune at 3795 Walnut Street in Denver, and announced: 'This is a holdup!' The brothers Fortune, together with customers who were then in the store, were forced to go to the basement, after which Tom Fortune was forced to ascend to the store at gun point by the defendant who compelled him to open the cash register and the safe and to place all the money in a sack. While this was taking place, another customer came in and was promptly forced into the basement. A third participant in the robbery came upon the scene after the initial entry by the defendant and his companion. Both Fortune brothers and one of the customers made a positive identification of the defendant. A fourth person thought that defendant was the same man, but was uncertain. In addition to the positive identification by the witnesses, two signed statements of the defendant were introduced in which he acknowledged his participation in the Fortune robbery, although claiming he was not inside the store but acted as a lookout on the outside. These statements were given following defendant's arrest on February 6, 1959 at Tacoma, Washington and during his incarceration in that city. The first of the statements was written by the defendant in his own handwriting and states that he 'was just out of Canon City and was just about broke'; that he ran into an acquaintance who proposed the robbery of Tommy's Market. Pursuant to agreement, the robbery of Tommy's Market was consummated, whereupon defendant and the others decided, and proceeded, to rob the Fortune store. A few days later they robbed the place referred to by the defendant in his first statement as a bar and cafe, later identified in his second statement as Petrino's Restaurant. The second statement, which was received in evidence, is typed and more detailed than the handwritten one, and was signed by defendant, notarized and witnessed.
Tommy's Market and Petrino's Restaurant were robbed within a few days of the Fortune Dry Goods Company robbery and the methods followed were almost identical. In each instance the customers were robbed, as in the Fortune transaction, and forced to the back of the store or into the basement. The owners in each instance were required to open the cash register and safe. At Petrino's Restaurant the employees were forced to go upstairs and to lie on the floor, a method similar to that shown in the ofense charged in the information.
According to the testimony of Tacoma officers, defendant was reluctant to make a statement during the initial interviews at Tacoma, Washington, and decided to do so only after the Tacoma authorities indicated willingness to return him to Denver. He had been involved in holdups in Tacoma as well as in Denver and preferred to take his chances in Denver. When the defendant was returned to Denver he denied participation in any of the robberies mentioned in his statements and said that he had signed such documents in order to get out of Tacoma; that since he had never actually committed the described crimes he was certain that he would be 'turned loose' in Denver in spite of the statements. He said that in fact he knew nothing about any of the robberies and that he had learned details of them from the written reports forwarded by Denver police to Tacoma. It is noteworthy, however, that these police reports, also received in evidence, did not contain some of the details included in defendant's statements.
Defendant testified at the trial and sought to establish an alibi. Two witnesses testifying in his behalf claimed that he lived in the same house with them following his parole from Canon City and that he was present at their home during the entire morning of December 22, when the robbery of the Fortune Dry Goods Company occurred and that he had left that evening by train for Tacoma. Defendant denied any part in the robbery of the Fortune Dry Goods Company and the two other robberies mentioned in his statements and told the jury that he had signed such statements in the belief that he would be acquitted in the Denver prosecution. His statement that he left Denver by train on December 22 (the night before the Petrino robbery) was corroborated by a witness who testified that she too was getting on the train on the night of the 22nd and that the defendant helped her with her baggage.
The original 'brief' filed by the defendant is strictly a homemade preparation from which it is most difficult to glean the points relied on for reversal. The one thing which emerges from the declarations of the accused contained in it is his abiding conviction that the cause should be reversed. In the reply brief filed on his behalf in response to that of the attorney general, the presentation is much more orderly and it is...
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...486; State v. Hawley (Mo.) 51 S.W.2d 77, 78; People v. Adamson, 225 Cal.App.2d 74, 77, 36 Cal.Rptr. 894, 896.4 Stanmore v. People, 146 Colo. 445, 450, 362 P.2d 1042, 1044.5 State v. McHenry, 7 Utah 2d 289, 291, 323 P.2d 710, 711; 1 Wharton, Criminal Evidence (12 ed.) § 235, note 5.6 Caruthe......
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Howe v. People, 24650
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