People v. Calderone

191 P.2d 75, 84 Cal. App. 2d 513, 1948 Cal. App. LEXIS 1227
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedMarch 23, 1948
DocketCrim. No. 709
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 191 P.2d 75 (People v. Calderone) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Calderone, 191 P.2d 75, 84 Cal. App. 2d 513, 1948 Cal. App. LEXIS 1227 (Cal. Ct. App. 1948).

Opinion

MARKS, J.

Defendant was convicted of the crime of conspiracy to commit robbery and was sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary. After sentence was pronounced he was returned to the court which then found that the robbery involved was in the first degree.

Allen Smith Renick, Joseph Rock and defendant were jointly charged with conspiracy to commit robbery. The evidence shows they met on a street in the city of San Diego on July 2, 1947, and agreed to rob the office of the San Diego Gas and Electric Company in National City on the morning of Monday, July 9, 1947. Renick was an employee of the company. He was to obtain a key to the office so that entry could be made by Rock and defendant, because Renick was known and would have been recognized by other employees. The entry was to be made at an early hour, and when employees arrived and had opened the safe the two were to complete the robbery.

[516]*516The three were jointly charged with the conspiracy, and Reniek and Rock, after pleading guilty, testified for the People. Defendant denied the conspiracy and denied having any connection with carrying it out. We gather from the testimony of Reniek and Rock that Reniek in his own automobile picked up Rock and defendant at their respective hotels in San Diego between 6 and 7 o ’clock on the morning of July 9th, and that the three drove to National City. Rock and defendant, using the key furnished by Reniek, entered the rear door of the office at about 7:30 a. m., and waited in a rear room until several employees arrived, the employees entering through the front door. Defendant remarked that there were too many employees present and he and Rock left through the rear door and joined Reniek in his automobile which was parked about a block and a half away. After the car had proceeded four or five blocks, defendant took off a coat, hat, gloves and dark glasses and left them in the car when he alighted from it. Reniek and Rock were arrested shortly thereafter. Officers found the coat, hat, gloves and dark glasses in the car. They also found a loaded revolver in the glove compartment. Rock and defendant denied any knowledge of this weapon. There is no evidence to the contrary and nothing to indicate that either of them was armed with any weapon when they entered' or departed from the office. The revolver had not been removed from the glove compartment by any of the conspirators.

Reniek testified that he went to the hotel in San Diego in which defendant was living, before 7 o’clock on the morning of July 9, and asked the clerk to call defendant; that Reniek then left the hotel and that defendant joined him about ten minutes later. The hotel clerk testified to the request of Reniek, the telephone to defendant’s room and that defendant came into the lobby a few minutes later and left the hotel. He could not fix the date of this oeeurrance other than it was some time during the first two weeks of July.

Mary Jane O’Shea was one of the employees of the San Diego Gas and Electric Company who entered the front door of the office on the morning of July 9th. She testified that she saw the rear door closing and went to it and tried to open it; that it was held on the outside; that she finally jerked it open and saw two men on the other side; that one of them resembled defendant in size and coloring; that he wore a coat, hat, gloves and dark glasses; that the coat found by the of[517]*517ficers in the Renick car resembled the coat worn by this man and that the hat was similar.

Defendant suggests there was no sufficient corroboration of the testimony of the accomplices. This is without merit as all that is required is that the corroborative evidence “tend to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense” (Pen. Code, §1111; People v. Morton, 139 Cal. 719 [73 P. 609]) and it is not required that such evidence establish defendant’s guilt independent of the testimony of the accomplice. Here the corroborative evidence sufficiently connected defendant with the commission of the crime.

Renick and Rock were permitted to testify before other evidence was introduced. Defendant objected to their testimony at that time. The objections were overruled with the express provision that counsel might move to strike their testimony in the event that other evidence failed to connect defendant with the offense charged. No such motion was made and the other evidence sufficiently connected defendant with the entry. Order of proof is usually a matter within the discretion of the trial court and we find no error in the rulings of the trial court in this respect.

During the course of its deliberations the jury returned to the court and asked for further instructions. During the colloquy that followed the trial judge remarked that “It is the duty of jurors to agree on a verdict if they can do so without doing violence to their own individual conscience.” (Emphasis ours.) A juror then said: “May I ask what you mean by great violence to our conscience, and how great is the violence!” The trial judge then re-read an instruction which contained the following: “It is the duty to (of) jurors to deliberate and consult together with a view to reaching an agreement if they can without violence to their individual understanding of the evidence and the law as given you in instructions by the Court.”

As thus modified and explained, we do not believe the first quoted language of the trial court was prejudicial to defendant.

Defendant, Renick and Rock were charged with conspiracy to commit robbery without specifying the degree of the robbery. Renick and Rock entered pleas of guilty and the jury found defendant guilty as charged without specifying the degree of the robbery.

[518]*518The reporter’s transcript shows that defendant was first sentenced to confinement in the state penitentiary for the term prescribed by law and that the degree of the attempted robbery was not then determined nor was it determined by the verdict. It further appears that later the same afternoon defendant was returned to court and the trial judge amended the prior judgment as follows: “It is the judgment of the Court that the conspiracy of which the defendant here stands convicted was for the purpose of committing a first degree robbery. The degree of the offense of conspiracy involved in this ease and of which this defendant stands convicted is therefore fixed at this time by the Court as first-degree conspiracy. ’ ’

The defendant now complains of this procedure and urges that there was no power in the trial court to change the judgment once pronounced on defendant. As the only change made was to fix a degree of the crime, this argument is answered by the case of People v. Hammond, 26 Cal.App.2d 145 [78 P.2d 1172]. In that case the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment but the trial court failed to fix the degree of the murder of which he was convicted. It was there held that the court might fix the degree of the murder 20 years after the conviction and sentence. A hearing was denied by the Supreme Court.

Conspiracy is not divided into degrees (Pen. Code, § 182) so the trial court’s finding that defendant was guilty of conspiracy in the first degree was unwarranted and should be disregarded as surplusage. The only importance of the finding that defendant conspired with others to commit robbery in the first degree is to aid in determining his minimum sentence. n

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178 Cal. App. 2d 62 (California Court of Appeal, 1960)

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Bluebook (online)
191 P.2d 75, 84 Cal. App. 2d 513, 1948 Cal. App. LEXIS 1227, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-calderone-calctapp-1948.