Court Opinion

ID: 9546549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:31:57.457404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:36.289817
License: Public Domain

CURTIS, J.
I dissent. A group of eleven defendants were accused in count one of an indictment with conspiracy to commit assaults Upon other persons by means of force *662likely to produce great bodily injury and to obtain property from other persons, with their consent, induced by the wrongful use of force and fear. In five other counts the defendants were charged with assaulting certain named persons by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury. The remaining count accused them of the crime of extortion.
The defendants Harry Dail and Dexter Lewis were convicted on count one and acquitted on all other counts. These two defendants were sentenced to the state penitentiary for the term prescribed by law, but the sentences were suspended and probation granted for a period of ten years. As a condition of the probation eighteen months of service in the county jail was imposed. The defendants David Belanger and Dewey Copelan were convicted on counts two and three of simple assault, a misdemeanor, a lesser but included offense, and acquitted on all other counts. They were sentenced to the county jail for a term of six months on both counts, sentences to run consecutively, and probation was denied. The indictment was dismissed as to defendant Walter Hart Burris. Defendant Paul McKnight pleaded guilty to count one and the remaining counts were dismissed as to him, except count two, the disposition of which does not appear in the record. The remaining five defendants were acquitted on all counts. Defendants Dail, Lewis, Belanger and Copelan all appealed from the orders denying new trials and from the judgments. As stated in the majority opinion, Bail died after taking his appeal. The remaining defendants appealing will be hereafter referred to as the appellants.
Bail was an international representative of the International Teamsters Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. In 1935 he was ordered to make a general survey of the various road truck operations covering the State of California. In May, 1936, he was permanently assigned to the Los Angeles area. His duties were to organize, assist in organization, and to negotiate wage scales where such services were requested by the local unions. When Dail came to Los Angeles, Local Union 208 was under international receivership, a situation provided for by the International Brotherhood constitution. A receiver may be appointed at any time by the international when the general executive council of that body determines that the local officers are not acting in the best interests of the membership. When appointed, a receiver has complete control of the local. At his own request Bail was appointed receiver for Local 208, al*663though by his own admission there was no section in the constitution which covered his reason for requesting receivership. Appellant Lewis became an organizer for Local 208 in November, 1936. As such organizer his duty was to contact truck drivers who were not union members and try to persuade them to join the union. In July, 1937, Lewis was made acting president of Local 208 and was later elected to that office. Appellants Belanger and Copelan were organizers and checkers for Local 208. As such their duties were to try to get new members, to cheek members to determine whether their dues were paid, and to collect dues. Defendant Schultz was secretary-treasurer of Local 208. The other defendants, including McKnight and Burris, were organizers, checkers and business agents.
The appellants make numerous assignments of error, the first being that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict. In view of the lengthy briefs running into thousands of pages, and the hundreds thereof devoted to arguments on the evidence, it should here be stated, as it has been many times before, that the appellants are not on trial before this court. They have already been tried by a fact-finding body in a trial extending over a period of three months. During that trial over 50 witnesses testified for the prosecution, over a hundred testified for the defense, and much documentary evidence was introduced. It was inevitable that there would be a great deal of conflicting evidence. It is well settled that on appeal all conflicts must be resolved against the appellant. This fundamental principle has at times been overlooked in the briefs before us in this case.
Appellant Lewis contends that there is no evidence of a general conspiracy nor is there any evidence showing his participation in any alleged conspiracy to commit assaults upon other persons by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury or to obtain property from other persons, with their consent, induced by the wrongful use of force and fear. The existence of a criminal conspiracy, like any other question of fact, is for the jury to determine. After a careful review of the record I am of the opinion that the jury might reasonably have inferred from the evidence presented that Dail and Lewis did conspire to commit the acts alleged.
It is contended that there is no direct evidence of a conspiracy or participation therein by Dail and Lewis. However, *664there need be no direct evidence to establish a conspiracy, and a common design or conspiracy may be deduced from attending circumstances, viz., the nature of the acts done, the relation of the parties and the interest of the alleged conspirators. (Johnstone v. Morris, 210 Cal. 580 [292 P. 970]; Beeman v. Richardson, 185 Cal. 280 [196 P. 774]; Revert v. Hesse, 184 Cal. 295 [193 P. 943]; People v. Donnolly, 143 Cal. 394 [77 P. 177]; People v. King, 30 Cal.App.2d 185 [85 P.2d 928]; People v. Yant, 26 Cal.App.2d 725 [80 P.2d 506] ; People v. Fitzgerald, 14 Cal.App.2d 180 [58 P.2d 718]; People v. Collier, 111 Cal.App. 215 [295 P. 898]; People v. Schmidt, 33 Cal.App. 426 [165 P. 555]; People v. Seefeldt, 310 Ill. 441 [141 N.E. 829]; Underhill’s Criminal Evidence, sec. 771.)
The avowed purpose of Dail and Lewis was to organize the trucking industry in Southern California. It was their duty to persuade non-union truck drivers to join the union and to persuade employers to enter into closed shop contracts with the union. A combination to do these things, within legal limits, would not of course be a criminal conspiracy. But if they conspired to commit assaults on non-union truckers to force them into the union or to commit assaults for the nonpayment of dues, then such action would be a criminal conspiracy as charged in the indictment. It would add nothing to this opinion to refer specifically to the numerous acts of assault. The record is replete with actual physical altercations between union organizers and non-union drivers, delinquent members, members of other unions, and drivers who owned their own trucks. Threats of personal injury and threats to and actual destruction of property run throughout the entire record. A denial of the occurrence of these physical encounters is merely an evidentiary argument contrary to the implied findings of the jury. The claim that if any organizers struck or kicked other persons, it was done only in self-defense is also an argument on the evidence, and the jury was justified in concluding otherwise. Whether the incidents were isolated and independent or all an integral part of a general conspiracy was a question of fact for the jury to determine. (People v. Kauffman, 152 Cal. 331 [92 P. 861].)
Appellant Lewis admitted that he was in charge of the activities of the organizers for Local 208. Of course, he denied that he ever gave any orders to his organizers to commit assaults on non-union members or delinquent members, *665but there is ample evidence to the contrary. All of the accomplice witnesses testified that such orders were given. Attorneys’ fees were authorized to be paid by Lewis for those who had been arrested for participation in assaults. Doctor and hospital bills were paid on Lewis’ authorization for those who had been injured while engaged in physical altercations. Lewis signed checks in payment for expenses, including vouchers for “Meals for goon squad, 35 cents” and “Meals for beef trust, $1.13.” A Mr. McCue, at the time general foreman for the Southern California Freight Lines, testified that Lewis told him that “he [Lewis] had gotten my job and that I was through, and I couldn’t show up around the place anymore, otherwise he would send a goon squad and cause me some trouble.” From the evidence referred to and the other evidence presented, the jury could reasonably have concluded that Lewis not only had knowledge of the activities of his organizers, but that he actually ordered the assaults to be committed. As the majority opinion conceded that the evidence is sufficient to support the verdict, a further review of the evidence will not be necessary, although the major parts of appellants’ lengthy briefs are devoted to the discussion of the evidence and in an attack upon the verdict of the jury as lacking in evidentiary support.
Appellants rely on section 1110 of the Labor Code in attacking certain instructions given by the trial court in regard to strikes, picketing, and boycotts. It is urged by appellants that because of the provisions of section 1110, no act may constitute a crime if done in the interests of labor. This section declares that no agreement between two or more persons to do or not to do an act in furtherance of a trade dispute between employers and employees is criminal, if the same act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime. The novel proposition of appellants apparently is that merely because their activities were connected with labor disputes, they are entirely free from prosecution for criminal acts. Such proposition is untenable. The appellant Lewis was neither charged with nor convicted of a conspiracy to do any act in furtherance of a labor dispute. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit assaults and extortion. Assaults and extortions are just as much crimes when committed by those engaged in labor activities as when committed by any other persons. There has been a great advance in the recognition *666of the rights of labor since the time when a mere combination of employees to procure higher wages and shorter hours was considered a criminal conspiracy, but neither statutory law nor court decision completely absolves a man from prosecution for a criminal act simply because he is allegedly engaged in labor activities. Both this court and the United States Supreme Court have recently reiterated the warning that physical violence, threats of violence and physical intimidation in labor disputes will not be tolerated. (See C. S. Smith Metropolitan Market Co. v. Lyons, 16 Cal.2d 389 [106 P.2d 414] ; McKay v. Retail Automobile Salesmen’s Local Union No. 1067, 16 Cal.2d 311 [106 P.2d 373] ; Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U.S. 287 [61 S.Ct. 552, 85 L.Ed 836, 132 A.L.R. 1200].) If in the alleged interest of labor, a conspiracy to commit the acts of assault and extortion is entered into, the conspirators may be prosecuted and their positions in and control of the unions involved may be taken into consideration along with other evidence in determining the existence of the conspiracy. Labor leaders are not “endowed with rights which the ordinary citizen individually does not have, ’ ’ as urged by the appellants.
In its instructions to the jury the trial court erroneously stated that certain acts constituted unlawful picketing and amounted to intimidation which was beyond the limits of peaceful persuasion. The criticism of these instructions in the main is that the court’s definitions in some cases included acts which might be done under the constitutional guarantees by those acting in behalf of the unions during a labor dispute, if their intimidation of workers was accomplished without the use of violence. These instructions were in part directly contrary to the law in this regard as it has been recently stated in Shafer v. Registered Pharmacists Union Local 1172, 16 Cal.2d 379 [106 P.2d 403] and McKay v. Retail Automobile Salesmen’s Local Union No. 1067, supra.
But in view of the evidence presented against the appellants in this ease, these instructions were not prejudicially erroneous. The appellants were convicted of a conspiracy to commit assaults and to obtain property by means of force. All of the acts which the witnesses testified were committed in connection with the strike, involved bodily injury or the threat of bodily injury. The jury was not called upon to decide whether certain acts charged against the appellants *667were within the limits of peaceful picketing; all of them lay far beyond the limits of what may lawfully be done in furtherance of the demands of a union in a labor dispute. The only issue to be determined by the jury’s verdict, insofar at least as the count on which appellants were convicted is concerned, was whether or not appellants had conspired to commit these illegal acts. Under the circumstances the error complained of resulted in no miscarriage of justice justifying a reversal of the judgments. (Sec. 4 ½, art. VI, Cal. Const.)
Appellants further complain of an instruction given by the court that “Business is property within the meaning of that term as used in the Penal Code and the threat of an interruption of the business which will necessarily be attendant with loss to the business, is a threat of an injury to property.” Even the most ardent supporter of labor would not controvert the truth of this statement. Indeed, that is the chief purpose of the strike and boycott, and it is difficult to understand appellants’ objection to it. They seem to argue that under such an instruction the jury would only have to decide that appellants conspired to call a strike or enforce a boycott in order to adjudge them guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion. This does not follow from the instruction given. The instruction did not state that every threat of interruption of business was an unlawful injury. Furthermore, as previously stated, the court had already instructed the jury that employees might strike or threaten to strike for lawful purposes. What constituted an unlawful injury was sufficiently defined in other instructions. When the trial court gave the challenged instruction, it undoubtedly had in mind incidents such as the Bed Line Transfer Company affair, in which appellant Lewis threatened to pull off all the truckers to force the company to pay unearned money to a discharged employee, and there is no doubt, in view of the other relevant instructions, that the jury accepted the challenged instruction in this light.
Appellants next attack the follow instruction: “You are instructed that one is responsible for what wrong flows directly from his corrupt intentions. If he set in motion the physical power of another, he is liable for its result. If he contemplated the result, he is answerable though it is produced in a manner he did not contemplate. If he awoke into action an indiscriminate power, he is responsible. If he gave *668directions vaguely and uncautiously and the person receiving them acted according to what he might have foreseen would be the understanding, he is responsible.” Inasmuch as Belanger and Copelan were actual participants in the assaults of which they were convicted, the instruction obviously was without application to them. The ease of People v. Munn, 65 Cal. 211 [3 P. 650], is cited in opposition to the challenged instruction. That ease presented a factually distinguishable situation in that the instruction there involved had to do solely with the responsibility of the defendant for his own acts and did not undertake, as here, to instruct the jury with respect to the responsibility of one for the acts of another when the former sets in motion the acts of the latter. Moreover, as distinguished from the instruction in the Munn case, supra,, the instruction here challenged did not make appellants answerable for every “possible” consequence, but held them accountable only for such result as was “contemplated” and for what wrong flowed “directly” from their conduct. The instruction must be read as a whole and interpreted in the light of the offenses charged and the facts as disclosed by the evidence. Appellant Lewis was prosecuted on the theory that he, as principal, ordered the acts of assault to be perpetrated. If he ordered the organizers to “persuade” non-union men to join the union and if necessary to use forceful persuasion, it is immaterial what particular method of physical force was used, i. e., whether the organizers used fists, feet, or baseball bats. If the “physical power” was set in motion by him or if he awoke an indiscriminate power in the form of orders to the organizers, he would be responsible as charged for the direct results thereof.' If, on the other hand, the organizers took it upon themselves to commit murder as an independent act, the principals would not be liable for such under the instruction given.
Appellants assert that the trial court committed error in charging the jury that it might find defendants guilty of conspiracy, if either conspiracy to commit assault or to extort were shown beyond a reasonable doubt. The attack on this instruction is utterly without merit, but is referred to as being illustrative of the type of argument that makes up a large portion of appellants’ voluminous briefs. By section 182 of the Penal Code, conspiracy is a crime in itself. The gravamen of the offense is the agreeing or conspiring to*669gether to commit a crime. The allegations of one count may allege the object of the conspiracy to be the commission of any number of separate and distinct crimes. (People v. Gilbert, supra; People v. Welch, 89 Cal.App. 18 [264 P. 324].) Because conspiracy to commit different offenses is charged in one count, it does not follow that the prosecution must prove conspiracy to commit all of the offenses alleged. Proof of conspiracy to commit any one of the offenses alleged would be sufficient, and this is precisely what the court instructed the jury.
It is urged that error was committed by the trial court in the giving of one of its instructions in regard to the sufficiency of corroboration of the testimony of an accomplice. The method of attack used by appellants is to isolate each sentence of the instruction and then attempt to point out error in the independent sentence. Instructions should be given a reasonable, not a close and technical interpretation. (8 Cal.Jur. 631). In testing the propriety of an instruction, the charge as a whole should be considered and not isolated excerpts. (People v. Besold, 154 Cal. 363 [97 P. 871].) The particular instruction under attack, when considered as a whole, is a proper recitation of the law applicable to the necessity of corroboration. It is not in conflict with section 1111 of the Penal Code, and all of the statements made are supported by the case of People v. Todd, 9 Cal.App.2d 237 [49 P.2d 611] and the authorities cited therein.
Many other instructions are attacked by appellants. In fact, few other than those offered by appellants escape attack. Appellants also complain of the court’s refusal to give certain instructions requested by them. Nothing can be gained by treating each of the remaining specifications of error separately. I am convinced that no prejudicial error has been committed by the giving or the refusal to give the instructions referred to by appellants. As in every group of instructions, some error may possibly exist but the practical administration of justice should not be defeated by a too rigid adherence to a close and technical analysis of the instructions to the jury. (People v. Schmah, 62 Cal.App. 192 [216 P. 624].)
In addition to the formal instructions, the trial court exercised the privilege given it under article VI, section 19, of the Constitution of this state, to comment on the evidence and *670the credibility of witnesses. Appellants attack the whole of the comment and claim it was made up of statements of erroneous rules of law and was not judicial comment, but had the effect of an argument for the prosecution. The scope of trial' court comment and the limitations thereon, under the above-cited constitutional provision, have been fully discussed in the recent cases of People v. Patubo, 9 Cal.2d 537 [71 P.2d 270, 113 A.L.R. 1303]; People v. Gosden, 6 Cal.2d 14 [56 P.2d 211]; People v Ottey, 5 Cal.2d 714 [56 P.2d 193]; People v. De Moss, 4 Cal.2d 469 [50 P.2d 1031], Further comment and citations on the subject are found in Notes 95 A.L.R. 785 and 113 A.L.R. 1308. With such full discussion already a part of the reports of this state, it is unnecessary that there be any further general comment here. In making its comment in the instant case, the court did not overstep the bounds of fair comment, nor did it assume the role of an advocate. As shown by the case of People v. Patubo, supra, a trial court may so abuse its privilege as to necessitate a reversal, but here I find no such “severe castigation and bitter denunciation” of the defendants as was present in that ease. In the instant case there is no language comparable to that in the Patubo case, wherein the court stated: “If ever a man by his appearance and his manner of giving testimony has shown himself to be a willful, deliberate and outright perjurer as to material facts in a case, the defendant in this case has been it.” At the outset and throughout the body of its comment the court here was careful to advise the jurors that they were the triers of the facts; that the opinion of the court was not binding upon them; and that if they arrived at conclusions different than those expressed by the court, it was not only their privilege, but their duty to disregard the conclusions of the court.
Appellants complain bitterly of a statement made by the trial court in the course of its comment that it was the jury’s duty to disregard the fact that the defendants were officers or members of a labor union. Far from being error, this comment was entirely proper and was made necessary by the attitude of the appellants themselves. Throughout the trial and in the briefs before this court appellants have attempted to make the issue one of capital versus labor. Such is not the issue. Appellants were charged with the commission of certain offenses. If the evidence showed they were guilty of *671those offenses, then it was proper that the jury bring in a verdict of conviction regardless of their association with a labor union. Prior to the excerpt complained of, the trial court pointed out that appellants were not being prosecuted because they were members of a labor union. It then referred to the crimes charged and followed with the statement that the jury should disregard appellants’ affiliation with the union in deciding the truth or falsity of the charges contained in the indictment. In so doing no error was committed.
Appellants assert that the trial court’s comment on the credibility of the testimony of the accomplice witnesses McKnight and Burris constituted an erroneous statement of law. The particular paragraph of comment attacked reads as follows: “And in this connection, ladies and gentlemen, the credibility of all of these witnesses is to be judged by you by the same standard as that of any other witness. The fact that the witness McKnight has entered a plea of guilty to one count of the indictment or that all charges against the witness Burris have been dismissed by the court on motion of the district attorney, standing alone, should not discredit, these witnesses or their testimony, unless, in addition thereto, there is something about their testimony or their manner of testifying or their interest in the case, or their bias or prejudice against one or any or all of the defendants which casts suspicion upon it in your minds. ’ ’ Considering this comment in connection with the formal instructions given, the evidence adduced at the trial, and the code sections governing accomplice testimony and testimony of witnesses generally, I am of the opinion that no error of law was committed.
In its formal instructions the court had fully advised the jury as to the necessity of corroborative evidence pointing to guilt independent of the testimony of accomplices. By these instructions the requirement of section 1111 of the Penal Code was met and the evidence shows that there was sufficient corroborative evidence. There being sufficient corroboration, it was then for the jury to determine the credibility of the accomplice witnesses and the same standard was to be used as would be applied to any other witness. The presumption that a witness speaks the truth, provided for in section 1847 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is as applicable to an accomplice witness as to any other. In the case of an *672accomplice witness this presumption might of course be more easily repelled because of his position, but that fact standing alone should not discredit the testimony as a matter of law, as urged by appellants. There is no valid statutory requirement that the court instruct the jury that it should view the testimony of an accomplice with distrust. Subdivision 4 of section 2061 of the Code of Civil Procedure "so provides, but that subdivision was declared unconstitutional in the ease of Hirshfeld v. Dana, 193 Cal. 142 [233 P. 451], It is true that the reenactment of that subdivision might be held valid since the 1934 amendment to section 19 of article VI, of the Constitution. of this state, permitting the court to comment on the facts and the credibility of witnesses, but such amendment cannot validate the section which was void when enacted. (See Banaz v. Smith, 133 Cal. 102 [65 P. 309] ; New-berry v. United States, 256 U.S. 232 [41 S.Ct. 469, 65 L.Ed. 913].) In any case appellants can have no complaint because the court in its formal instructions did inform the jury that “Under such conditions, the law attaches the qualification to the testimony of such witness that it must be corroborated as herein set forth and should be viewed with distrust, all independent of the question of guilt or innocence of the defendants. ’ ’
“The defendants Lewis and Pitts have admitted to you from the witness stand their activities in the management and control of the affairs of the organization and their consequent responsibility therefor. It is therefore not necessary for you to determine that responsibility, since it stands admitted, and should you find that the acts or activities of any of the other defendants constituted or amounted to criminal offenses, you would be warranted in finding the defendants Lewis and Pitts equally guilty of such offense or offenses. ’ ’
Appellants argue that the above quoted comment amounted to a directed verdict against them. I cannot agree with this contention. By this comment the court was doing no more than exercising its right to comment on the evidence. As to Lewis and Pitts, the jury was told that it would be warranted in finding them guilty of the acts charged. Both before and after this comment the court was careful to point out that all issues of fact were to be ultimately determined by the jury. The fact that Pitts was acquitted of all charges is evidence that the jury did not consider this comment as a di*673rected verdict. If it had been so considered, Lewis would have been convicted of assault along with Belanger and Copelan.
The majority opinion specifies numerous other portions of the comment as error, but I do not deem it necessary to give them detailed consideration. What was said in conclusion in the case of People v. Ottey, supra, is equally applicable here. It was there stated at page 730: “Although the court’s comments might be said to show some lack of care in the preparation thereof, nevertheless viewing the comments as a whole in the light of the evidence and the inferences rationally to be drawn therefrom, we cannot escape the conclusion that the jury did so function as the sole and exclusive judges of the facts, the weight to be accorded the testimony, and the credibility of the witnesses, and that the verdict returned by them was their verdict exclusively. [Citing authority.] In such a case further discussion of the subject matter or the views of the courts in other jurisdictions as applied to special classes of comments indulged under the law and the facts there involved, would serve no useful purpose. ’ ’
There remain to be considered appellants’ numerous specifications of error of the trial court’s rulings on the evidence. It is first urged that the court erred in permitting, over appellants’ objections, the proceedings by which the accomplice and co-indictee McKnight changed his plea of not guilty to one of guilty on count one, to be conducted in the presence of the jury. The jury was instructed that the plea of guilty was not evidence against the other defendants, and they were specifically instructed to disregard it entirely. The authorities cited by appellants to the effect that prior confessions or pleas of guilty in subsequent trials of alleged co-conspirators or accomplices are inadmissible, are therefore not applicable. The only question is as to the alleged misconduct of the trial court in permitting the plea to be made in the presence of the jury. McKnight was one of the eleven defendants charged and all were being tried together. A day or two after the trial was under way appellants’ attorney pointed out that McKnight was going to plead guilty and asked that the jury be withdrawn. In answer to this request the trial court properly pointed out that it would be a useless act because at some time throughout the trial the fact that McKnight had pleaded guilty would inevitably be disclosed to the jury. The *674denial of the request was simply a proper exercise of the court’s discretion in conducting the trial. A similar ruling was under review in the case of Grunberg v. United States, 145 P. 81 [76 C.C.A. 51]. In that case the plea of guilty of one defendant was taken in the presence of the jury panel over the objection of the other defendants. The reviewing court- stated at page 86: “We can, however, hardly regard this as prejudicial, because it is impossible to escape the belief that the fact that Burman had pleaded would come out in the course of the trial, and, also, that it would become a matter of common knowledge about the courtroom, which the entire panel would inevitably be affected by. . . . The true answer to the whole is that this was one of the ordinary incidents of a trial which is within the discretion of the court, and which we cannot review.” (See, also, Commonwealth v. Biddle, 200 Pa. 640 [50 A. 262].)
It is contended by appellants that the court erred in receiving in evidence over objection as hearsay, People’s Exhibits 31, 97 and 100, consisting of letters written by the accomplice witness Burris, and that such error was prejudicial because the letters consisted of remarks made against Lewis that were ‘ ‘ derogatory in nature and liberally sprinkled with epithets and vituperation.” These exhibits were introduced on redirect examination after attempted impeachment by inference on cross-examination that Burris’ motive in testifying as he did on direct examination was to curry favor with the prosecution, and that such testimony on direct examination was fabricated with this motive in mind. These exhibits tended to rebut the inferred impeachment in that they showed that Burris was of the same mind prior to his visits to the district attorney’s office. When a witness is charged with testifying under the influence of some motive prompting him to make a false statement, it may be shown that he made similar statements at a time when the imputed motive did not exist. (People v. Kynette, 15 Cal.2d 731, 753 [104 P.2d 794]; Barkly v. Copeland, 74 Cal. 1 [5 Am.St.Rep. 413, 15 P. 307]; Davis v. Tanner, 88 Cal.App. 67 [262 P. 1106] ; Clark v. Dalziel, 3 Cal.App. 121 [84 P. 429].) On cross-examination appellants had introduced their Exhibit Z, which referred to People’s Exhibit 97. The latter then could be introduced as the balance of the whole on the same subject permitted by section 1854 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In regard to *675Exhibits 31 and 100, the jury was instructed that they were not to be taken as proof of the matters stated therein, but only for the purpose of considering whether Burris fabricated evidence after getting in touch with the district attorney’s office. Even assuming that the receipt in evidence of the exhibits was erroneous, appellants have no reason to complain because although they did contain statements “derogatory in nature and liberally sprinkled with epithets and vituperation, ’ ’ practically the identical statements were contained in Exhibit Z introduced by appellants prior to the introduction of the questioned exhibits.
Appellants next assert that error was committed in restricting the cross-examination of the accomplice witness McKnight and in permitting the cross-examination of defense witnesses beyond the scope of direct examination. To consider each point raised under these assertions would be to extend unnecessarily this dissent beyond all reasonable lengths. I am well aware of the necessity of affording the defendants’ counsel the fullest scope of cross-examination of an accomplice witness (See People v. Pantages, 212 Cal. 237 [297 P. 890] ; People v. Williams, 18 Cal. 187; People v. Schmitz, 7 Cal.App. 330 [94 P. 407, 15 L.R.A.N.S. 717]), but I am equally aware of the necessity of permitting a liberal discretion on the part of the trial court in conducting the trial generally and in controlling the examination of witnesses. As pointed out earlier in this dissent, the defendants are not on trial before this court. An appellate court should not, and as a practical. matter cannot, re-try every case on appeal. Many of the specifications of error made by appellants in regard to the cross-examination of McKnight are without merit. For example, he was asked on cross-examination if two men had not approached him at his home and asked him if he would give a statement which would help convict the defendants, and he replied that he had been so approached. Questions along this line were objected to as hearsay and not connected in any way with the case. The men referred to were not identified in any way nor were they shown to be connected with the district attorney’s office. The objection was properly sustained. (See People v. Achal, 125 Cal.App. 652 [14 P.2d 773].) McKnight’s contact with the district attorney’s office was fully brought out in other portions of the testimony. The defense witness C. G. Anthony, vice-*676president of Pacific Freight Lines, was questioned on direct examination concerning the conduct of a picket line in front of the freight line offices. On cross-examination this witness testified that he saw men with wounds, these men being employees who had not gone out on strike; that one of his men had received a severe beating; that during the strike a rifle bullet had been fired into one of the company’s gasoline tankers on the Ridge Route; and that a truck was turned over and windshields were broken. The questions calling for the above testimony were all objected to as going beyond the scope of direct examination and as being hearsay. The overruling of such objections was obviously not error. All that was testified to took place during the time the picket line was on, and Anthony was testifying as to facts within his own knowledge. The defendants were being tried on charges of assaults, extortion and conspiracy to commit those offenses. Lewis testified that he was in charge of this strike and picket line. There can be no question that, the testimony was relevant.
No further reference need be made to specific testimony or the introduction or asserted suppression of evidence generally. Some error may have been committed by the trial court, but in view of the discretion that must be placed in the hands of the trial court in controlling the examination of witnesses and the introduction of evidence, particularly in cases in which the crime of conspiracy is charged, I am convinced that no prejudicial error has resulted.
The appeal of appellant Bail should be dismissed, and the judgments and orders denying new trials as to the other appellants should be affirmed.
Shenk, J., concurred.