Cramblit

Defendants appeal from judgments (orders of probation) entered after a jury found them guilty of violating Penal Code section 496a. They were given misdemeanor sentences. Section 496a imposes criminal penalties on junk, metal, and secondhand material dealers or collectors who fail to use due diligence to ascertain the authority of persons seeking to sell metal parts or wire of a sort ordinarily used by public utilities.

I

On October 27, 1975, Officer Jorge Gil-Bianco of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department drove a truck to A-L Metals (hereinafter A-l), 2600 Elkhorn Boulevard, Rio Linda, California, a business owned by defendant Betty Marie Cramblit’s husband. He was working undercover in street clothes. He had 14 water meters, which the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department had obtained from a San Francisco police officer, in two cardboard boxes in the back of the truck. The meters all had serial numbers and some had tags on them stating “San Francisco Water Department.” Most were used, but one or two were entirely new. The cardboard boxes containing the meters were stamped “City and County of San Francisco.”

Gil-Bianco spoke to defendant Niles Eugene Rawls, Jr., an…