People v. Coke

230 Cal. App. 2d 22, 40 Cal. Rptr. 649, 1964 Cal. App. LEXIS 839
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedSeptember 28, 1964
DocketCrim. No. 1924
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 230 Cal. App. 2d 22 (People v. Coke) 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. Coke, 230 Cal. App. 2d 22, 40 Cal. Rptr. 649, 1964 Cal. App. LEXIS 839 (Cal. Ct. App. 1964).

Opinion

GRIFFIN, P. J.

Defendant-appellant Constance Lee Coke was charged in an information with violations of Penal Code, sections 484-487 (grand theft), in that about March 15, 1962, she did feloniously take money in excess of $200 belonging to Harbour Realty Corporation and Walnut Partners. She entered a plea of not guilty after hearing on a motion to set aside the information under Penal Code, section 995. Defendant was found guilty as charged by a jury. A motion for new trial was denied and defendant was sentenced to state prison. Defendant, in propria persona, filed a notice of appeal.

Facts

Defendant applied for a position as PBX-receptionist at a multicorporate real estate development firm which had extensive subdivision operations, but being found to be better qualified as a bookkeeper she was employed in that capacity. As part of her duties, she received certain funds, including buyers’ deposits on home purchases and moneys paid by home buyers for optional extras to be installed in their homes. Upon defendant’s giving notice of her intention to quit, her employer sought an audit of the books. The audit revealed that funds in excess of $8,000 were missing from the buyers' extras account, which account was primarily defendant’s obligation to administer. There was some evidence that these shortages could have resulted from extras given away by salesmen as added inducements for home purchases, or from careless money handling procedures within the accounting office generally. There was sufficient other evidence of her having received the funds. She was in charge of them when they disappeared.

One Kenneth E. Brown was chief accountant and treasurer and was directly in charge of several girl employees. He interviewed these employees and hired them, including [25]*25defendant, and assigned them their duties. Defendant had applied for work under the name of Lee Marshall and was assigned as a bookkeeper. She had to account to Mr. Brown for her work. She was the only person authorized to post entries in the various books connected with the Harbour Realty Company. She received from salesmen downpayments from the sale of houses and deposits thereon, and she was supposed to deposit these sums in various banks and in escrow. She had access to the safe, to the money and to the records. There were others who had access to the safe vault, but she was the only one who posted entries in the books and the only one who determined any shortages. During the entire year she worked she never reported any shortage or discrepancy. She later married and assumed the name of Constance Lee Coke.

A certified public accountant spent many hours checking the accounts and transactions and first found the accounts correct but later, after a different check, found many buyers ’ extras forms to be missing from the files in defendant’s office, reflecting the fact that money had been received and that there was no posting in the ledger for these amounts. The audit disclosed that the buyers’ extras checks were substantiated for downpayment in cash, but no record was made of the cash receipts. Also, some items were accounted for by misfiling, but $8,000 was found to be missing during the year of the audit period.

The audit commenced on June 1, 1962, and defendant left the firm on June 6, 1962. About two or three months before the audit, Mr. Brown discussed with defendant a shortage of about five or six hundred dollars from “buyers’ extras” and “down-payments,” which should have been in the vault in cash but which was not there. He had reported this to his superior. Mr. Brown presented documents to defendant which represented such a shortage. Two hours later she brought the buyers’ deposits forms, which were not in the safe, with the proper amount of money in cash attached to them. She was supposed to keep all cash in the safe.

L. B. Harbour, Jr., a general contractor, called defendant into his office when the audit was ordered and told her that her husband had telephoned him anu stated defendant was bringing home certain amounts of money for which she had not satisfactorily accounted to him; that she had told him that some of the money was from bonuses which the company was paying her; Mr. Harbour said to her that he told her [26]*26husband this was information not available to the public. The court struck Mr. Harbour’s testimony that he received a call from defendant’s husband because Mr. Harbour could not identify defendant’s husband’s voice, but Mr. Harbour’s statement to defendant and her response thereto were properly admitted. Mr. Harbour testified that defendant became very emotional and cried when told of the conversation with her husband. Apparently no bonuses of any sort were being paid by the company except a bonus of $300 at Christmas time and possibly profit-sharing distributions accruing to her account.

Richard P. Simpson, a certified public accountant, testified that he performed the audit in June 1962; that he found that the sales receipts indicated that more sales had been made than were recorded in the books and that copies were missing. Checks were produced showing that actual payments had been made by the buyer in several cases and no entry was made in the books of such payments. The auditor found sales that were not recorded in the books and money received therefrom that was not in the bank.

A police officer testified that about June 29, 1960, he investigated a theft or shortage in the books of a Packard-Bell distributor. Defendant was their bookkeeper at that time. He said that he interviewed defendant and she made a voluntary statement after being presented with numerous invoices; that she stated that she took the money (around $1,000) by fraudulent means and used it for her own purposes; that she forged her name to many checks which were payable to her employer and cashed them; that the reason she did so was to try to impress a boy friend. She also admitted taking money in a similar manner to that here employed from another company in Santa Ana totaling about $2,000 while working as a bookkeeper there. She said that she had made so many false entries and taken so much money that she could not recall the total amount of her thefts.

One Theodore C. Bentley was in a similar business as the Butler-Harbour Company during 1960. He employed defendant as a bookkeeper and put her in charge of the accounting department. Shortages appeared in the books. Duplicate checks had been issued for one disbursement in the sum of $550 and one of • these cheeks was missing from the bank statement. This check had been cashed personally by defendant. She was confronted with these checks in the presence of her employer’s auditor and she became emotionally dis[27]*27turbed and stated that she had cashed the check and removed it from the cancelled checks.

One Anita Louise Gerfen testified that about August 1, 1962, while she and defendant were incarcerated in the same cell in the county jail, defendant told her that she had taken money in small amounts from the place where she worked and that she would be accused of taking about $7,000, but that she thought what she took was somewhere between twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred dollars and that she took it home and told her husband “it was bonuses that she had earned,” and that she “had taken the cash and transferred papers, and things around so complicated she didn’t see how anyone could prove how she had taken it”; that she took the money in cash; that she told Mrs.

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Related

People v. Hathcock
504 P.2d 476 (California Supreme Court, 1973)
People v. Lopez
254 Cal. App. 2d 185 (California Court of Appeal, 1967)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
230 Cal. App. 2d 22, 40 Cal. Rptr. 649, 1964 Cal. App. LEXIS 839, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-coke-calctapp-1964.