State v. Patten
| Decision Date | 10 May 1921 |
| Docket Number | 33498 |
| Citation | 182 N.W. 788,191 Iowa 639 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, Appellee, v. LLOYD PATTEN, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Polk District Court.--JOSEPH E. MEYER, Judge.
THE defendant was convicted of the crime of robbery, and appeals.
Affirmed.
Parsons & Mills, for appellant.
Ben J Gibson, Attorney General, and B. J. Flick, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
On the morning of March 25, 1919, before banking hours, two men rapped at the door of the Iowa State Bank, located near the corner of Sixth and Locust Streets, in the city of Des Moines, and obtained entrance on the pretense that they desired to make a deposit in the bank. These two men were John Keating and Robert Don Carlos. They displayed a considerable amount of money in currency, and conducted themselves as though they were about to deposit it in the bank, when they suddenly turned, and ordered the officers in the bank to thrown up their hands. They forced the officers into a lavatory in the back part of the bank, where they locked them in, and then took about $ 2,300 in money, war savings stamps of the value of about $ 1,100, government bonds of the value of $ 15,800, and certain waterworks bonds of the value of $ 5,000. They placed all of this in a blue kit bag, passed out of the front door of the bank on Locust Street, and then turned west and passed up the alley between Sixth and Seventh Streets, north to Grand Avenue. At that place, they entered an automobile, which was awaiting their arrival, and were immediately driven away in the car. They drove out through Highland Park, and, after they arrived in the country, the car was stopped, and the driver of the car went to a farmhouse, and asked permission of the farmer to drive the car down in the timber. This was done, and, in the seclusion of the woods, the loot which had been taken from the bank was divided into five equal parts: three parts were given to the man who drove the car, and the two men who had entered the bank took one part each. While they were in the woods, they burned some of the papers that had been taken from the bank. The following Sunday, the farmer and his wife were in the woods, and found a scrap of paper that had been taken from the bank, and also evidences of where other paper had been burned.
After dividing the spoils, the parties drove the car back toward Des Moines; and, while they were driving along Forest Avenue, one of the tires on the automobile went down, and it became necessary to stop and replace a rear wheel with a spare wheel which was being carried. While this was being done, the driver of the car went to a telephone, and telephoned the wife of Don Carlos to meet them in a taxi at East Twenty-Second Street and Grand Avenue, in Des Moines. The parties drove to this point immediately thereafter, and were met by Mrs. Don Carlos in a taxi.
The two robbers, Keating and Don Carlos, then left, and went to a place on East Fourteenth Street, where they stayed for a time, and then went to the apartments of one Lizzie Christy on West Ninth Street, and later in the night, departed by train for St. Joseph, Missouri.
Both Keating and Don Carlos were witnesses in behalf of the State at the trial of this cause, and testified substantially as above set forth, and each testified that the appellant was the party who drove the car.
I. The question urged upon this appeal is whether or not there is sufficient evidence in the record to corroborate the testimony of these two parties, and to meet the requirements of Section 5489 of the Code, which is as follows:
"A conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice, unless corroborated by other evidence which shall tend to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense; and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely show the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof."
It must be conceded that, under this statute, unless there is other evidence than that of the accomplices which shall tend to connect the appellant with the commission of the offense, the conviction cannot be sustained; and also that the corroboration, by the very language of the statute, "is not sufficient if it merely show the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof." There is abundant evidence in the record to sustain the testimony of these two witnesses as to the commission of the offense and the circumstances attending it. The question urged on this appeal, however, is whether there is sufficient evidence to corroborate the testimony of these two parties tending to connect the appellant with the commission of the offense.
The claim of the State was that the plans for the robbery were made at an apartment occupied by one Lizzie Christy, and that the parties met there on the morning of the robbery. The appellant testified in his own behalf that he had breakfast at Lizzie Christy's on the morning of the date of the robbery, about 7 o'clock; that Don Carlos and his wife came in and ate; and that he is not positive whether Keating came in or not.
Mrs. Hazel Lynch, a witness in behalf of the State, testified that, on the morning of the robbery, she saw Lizzie Christy, the appellant, Don Carlos and his wife, and a gentleman, at Lizzie Christy's apartment.
The witness William Curan testified that he owned a Stutz car during the month of March, which he kept at Rood's garage, and that he loaned it to the appellant a number of times. He could not say positively that he loaned it to the appellant the day of the robbery, but that appellant had it several times about that date; that, at one time about that date, when the appellant returned the car, there was something wrong with the hub cap on a rear wheel, and appellant told the witness that he had changed the tire on the car, and that the threads did not go back in place. The witness took the car to Rood's garage,...
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