Roach v. State

1930 OK CR 46, 287 P. 1095, 46 Okla. Crim. 85, 1930 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 493
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedJanuary 31, 1930
DocketNo. A-7025.
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 1930 OK CR 46 (Roach v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Roach v. State, 1930 OK CR 46, 287 P. 1095, 46 Okla. Crim. 85, 1930 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 493 (Okla. Ct. App. 1930).

Opinion

CHAPPELL, J.

Plaintiff in error, hereinafter called defendant, was convicted in the district court of Craig county on a charge of robbery with firearms, and his punishment fixed at imprisonment in the state penitentiary for a term of eighteen years.

The defendant was jointly charged with one Claud Ballard and with two unknown men, designated in the information as John Doe and Richard Roe, with the robbery of the Bluejacket State Bank, on August 19, 1927. The defendant demanded a severance which was granted, and upon a verdict of guilty he prosecutes his appeal to this court. The evidence against the defendant is altogether circumstantial.

The circumstances tending to connect the defendant with this crime are substantially as follows: On the 16th day of August, 1927, the defendant was seen in the town of Bluejacket driving a blue Dodge sedan, in which there were, at that time riding with him, Claud Ballard, and a third man, who was a stranger in Bluejacket, and who approximated the description given of the taller of the *87 two men who robbed the bank. These three men were seen together in defendant’s automobile at a filling station directly opposite the bank, and especial attention was attracted to the third man, because he continued for five or ten minutes during the time they were stopped at the filling station to gaze intently at and into the bank and its surrounding^.

The defendant lived in the town of Commerce. The testimony is that for some time prior to this robbery there had been an old Ford touring car located at the defendant’s premises, which car bore an Indiana license tag. This car disappeared a few days before the bank robbery. The defendant owned a Dodge sedan with an Oklahoma license tag on it, which bore the number of the Dodge sedan seen in Bluejacket on August 16, 1927.

On the day the bank was robbed, the defendant was seen about four miles east of the Skeets’ place driving west in the direction of said place, and afterwards the Dodge sedan of the defendant was seen parked in front of the Skeets’ place two miles east of Bluejacket, and at about the time the robbery occurred the defendant himself was seen out of the car, looking down the road in a south direction. After robbing the bank the robbers came up this road, abandoned the Ford at the Skeets’ place, and were taken away by somebody in another kind of an automobile.

About 11 o’clock on the morning of the bank robbery the defendant was seen driving his car in an easterly direction at the town of Nareissa, several miles east of the Skeets’ place, and at that time he had some other people in the car with him. Claud Ballard, one of the codefendants, and this defendant were intimate acquaintances. Ballard lived in Bluejacket. On the day before the rob *88 bery Ballard was also seen at the Skeets’ place, and there were with him at that time two men in a dilapidated Ford touring car, and these men and Ballard were engaged in close conversation.

Defendant was arrested on August 22, 1927, at his home in Commerce which is north and east of the town of Bluejacket, and in going from Bluejacket to defendant’s home a person would travel by automobile on the road leading east from Bluejacket to Narcissa and from there northeast to the city of Miami and then to Commerce. At the time defendant was arrested Claud Ballard was also arrested at defendant’s house. At the time of the arrest the defendant’s Dodge sedan was seen in his garage at Commerce. About three or four hours afterward the officers went back to find the car, but it had disappeared, and was not seen or heard of up to the day of the trial.

When the robbers made their escape from the bank on the road where they turned south, a mile west of Bluejacket they lost one of the casings from the left rear wheel of the automobile and continued to drive the Ford on the rim of the wheel to the Skeets’ place. A dilapidated Ford car identified as the one used by the robbers was found at the Skeets’ place with the rear tire missing from the left wheel. This Ford touring car was identified as being similar to the old Ford touring car seen at defendant’s place some days prior to the robbery, and was found concealed in the weeds on the Skeets’ place shortly after the robbery.

The defendant did not take the witness stand and made no effort to explain any of these incriminating circumstances or deny his presence at any of the places where the state’s witnesses located him. Defendant’s neighbors at the town of Commerce testified that the defendant left *89 left home in Commerce a few days before the robbery and did not return thereto until after the robbery. Defendant made no attempt to deny his absence from home or explain his presence at any of the places testified to by state’s witnesses.

The defendant undertook to establish an alibi, but called only one witness, Arthur Allen, for such purpose, who testified on direct examination that defendant’s! Dodge car on the day of the robbery was in the “Dinty Moore Auto Laundry” from 10 o’clock in the morning until about 12:30 o’clock that afternoon; that the defendant brought the car there, came back and got it, and paid $2 for having it washed. On cross-examination the witness testified that he was not positive as to the date defendant took the car there, that it might have been the day after the robbery or the day before the robbery, but that it could not have been more than one day either way. This was the only attempt made by the defendant to explain his whereabouts with his car on the day of the robbery. Since he made such an attempt to account for his whereabouts and failed and called no other witness and made no attempt to explain his whereabouts or account for his presence at the Sheets’ place at the time of the robbery, all these circumstances tend to strengthen the state’s case as to the guilt of the defendant.

Not all the facts and circumstances are set out in this statement, but all the facts and circumstances in the record taken together are sufficient to establish the fact that the defendant aided and abetted in planning this bank robbery and assisted the actual robbers in making their get-away.

The defendant first contends that the court erred in overruling his demurrer to the information. The information charges the defendant, together with other men, of *90 robbing one Clayton Spradlin, the cashier of the Bluejacket State Bank, of $458 in money, both coin and currency. The objection urged against this information is that it is defective and insufficient in failing to charge that the money taken was lawful money of the United '•States, and, also, in failing to set out the kind of money charged to have been taken and the value of the same.

In the case of Jenkins v. State, 44 Okla. Cr. 217, 280 Pac. 477, 478, this court said, in the body of the opinion:

“The first contention is that the information is insufficient in failing to particularly describe the money taken in the robbery and in failing to allege the value of it. The information described the property taken as ‘$200 in ten and twenty dollar bills.’ This is a sufficient allegation on this point.

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Related

Parks v. State
1954 OK CR 59 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1954)
Scott v. State
1945 OK CR 48 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1945)
Rowan v. People
26 P.2d 1066 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1933)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1930 OK CR 46, 287 P. 1095, 46 Okla. Crim. 85, 1930 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 493, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roach-v-state-oklacrimapp-1930.