Court Opinion

ID: 9584506
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:49:05.745241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:08:04.322198
License: Public Domain

SADLER, Justice (dissenting). The defendants urge a single claim of error, namely, that the trial court erred in denying the motion for an instructed verdict in their favor at the close of the state’s case. They rested when the state did and elected not to put on any evidence themselves. The sole ground urged below in support of the motion was and here is that there was no proof of entry, without which a verdict of guilty could not be sustained. It will be agreed that entry must be proved but not that the verdict lacks evidence sufficient to support it in this particular. On the contrary, it is my view there are facts in evidence which together with inferences properly to be deduced from them will support a finding of entry and thus support the verdict. The “breaking” is established beyond all peradventure of doubt and the evidence on that issue need not be discussed. It is important, however, to determine when the breaking occurred with reference to other established facts. It is to be recalled the officers found a runway from the door sill to the ground level upon which the accused obviously planned to roll the safe from the building. As the officer described the runway the boards or planks of which it was made were four feet in length and extended that distance into the alley from the door sill to the point where he located a trench three inches deep prepared to receive them. The trench either had been dug or beaten in the ground to receive the planks and steady the improvised runway. Thus the planks of which the runway was made were placed flush against the door sill at one end and were resting in the trench at the other end. The pertinent inquiry presents itself as to when the labor of constructing this runway took place — before or after the “breaking”. The jurors as practical men must have believed the accused would never undertake the otherwise futile task of making the runway unless and until they had made sure of their ability to effect an entry. Furthermore, drawing to their aid the law of probability, the jurors must have known that men do not prepare a runway without some knowledge of the weight and size of the object to 'be transported over it, more especially the gauge of the wheels upon which the object rests and is to be rolled from the building. _The only means by which the accused could get that information in the case at bar was to examine the 'safe and form some estimate of it in the respects mentioned, if not actually measure the distance between its wheels. But the safe was inside the building located near a window at the front. In order to reach it from the rear door one would be compelled to travel the entire length of the building. Nothing more appearing, and a breaking being abundantly established, a runway on which to remove a safe being found at the point of the “‘breaking” at one end of a building and an object as heavy and bulky as the ordinary safe being found within and at the other end of the building, it requires no resort to surmise or speculation, as counsel for defendants so vigorously argues it does, for the jury to conclude an entry was made to inspect the safe before undertaking preparation of the runway. Once it is agreed that the accused had sprung the lock and opened the door to the building before preparing the runway upon which it was planned to remove the safe, it is more difficult to conceive means by which they could engage in the work of building the runway and avoid effecting an entry as legally defined than to visualize them at this work without doing so. The enterprise upon which they were engaged does not suggest them to be men learned in the law and, unmindful as they were of the legal nicety of reasoning which marks the difference between entry and non-entry following a breaking, and working in an open space immediately over the door sill in laying one end of the runway, it would have required conscious effort on the part of the accused so laboring to avoid having some portion of his body cross over the imaginary line, mere inches away, marking “entry.” The least protrusion, however slight, of any part of the body is sufficient to constitute “entry.” 12 C.J.S., Burglary, § 10, p. 674; People v. Pettinger, 94 Cal. App. 297, 271 P. 132; State v. Chappell, 185 S.C. 111, 193 S.E. 924. As men of ordinary intelligence with practical every day experience in human affairs, the jurors must have believed that one of the accused, engaging himself in no such conscious effort of the sort mentioned, in his 'bodily movements while so employed did cross this line with some portion of his body. This, too, regardless of whether, as seems quite likely, one or both entered and inspected the safe. These theories, finding support in the evidence and in legitimate inferences deducible therefrom, are sufficient to sustain the verdict returned by the jury. If either defendant made an entry with any part of his body, both are equally guilty. State v. Kidd, 34 N.M. 84, 278 P. 214; State v. Mersfelder, 34 N.M. 465, 284 P. 113. Cf. Territory v. Gallegos, 17 N.M. 409, 130 P. 245. And it is not essential in a prosecution for burglary that the state prove the particular manner of entry, since breaking and entry may be proved by circumstantial, as well as by direct, evidence. People v. Basuino, 118 Cal.App. 158, 4 P.2d 971; People v. Cascino, 137 Cal.App. 73, 29 P.2d 895; People v. Reeves, 360 Ill. 55, 195 N.E. 443; Wilborne v. Commonwealth, 182 Va. 63, 28 S.E.2d 1. Nor, an entry being established, is a defendant to have credit, “as a matter of law,” because the arrival of an officer or others on the scene prevent® the completion of his criminal enterprise. Creek v. State, 214 Ark. 429, 216 S.W.2d 787; Mouser v. State, 215 Ark. 131, 219 S.W.2d 611; People v. Cascino, supra; Johnson v. State, 75 Ga.App. 581, 44 S.E.2d 149. While the evidence of entry is not as strong as might be desired, in my opinion it does not lack substantial quality. As said by the Supreme Court of California in People v. Flynn, 73 Cal. 511, 15 P. 102, 103: “It rarely happens that an offense, like that here complained of, can be proved by witnesses who saw and recognized the defendant in the act, and resort must, therefore, ordinarily be had to circumstantial evidence.” A careful reading of the record satisfies me that the finding of entry embraced within the general verdict of the jury is not without substantial support in the evidence. State v. Montoya, 23 N.M. 657, 170 P. 733; State v. Lott, 40 N.M. 147, 56 P.2d 1029. It is neither surmise nor speculation on the part of a jury to draw reasonable inferences from affirmative facts proven. Hepp v. Quickel Auto & Supply Co., 37 N.M. 525, 25 P.2d 197; State v. Jones, 39 N.M. 395, 48 P.2d 403. The judgment of the trial court is without error and should be affirmed. The majority concluding otherwise, for the reasons given, I dissent. COMPTON, J., concurs.