Andrews

The trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss an information charging him with three counts of arson (violation of Pen. Code, § 447a). The grounds: that the evidence introduced at the preliminary hearing was insufficient to justify his being held to answer in that the corpus delicti had not been established; that therefore defendant had been committed without reasonable or probable cause (Pen. Code, § 995). The People have appealed under Penal Code section 1238.

Evidence at the preliminary hearing covered three separate fires (1) a rooming house and hotel at 699 El Camino Avenue, North Sacramento, December 24, 1962; (2) a garage at 591 Redwood Avenue in North Sacramento, December 28, 1962; (3) a residence at 545 Eleanor Avenue, North Sacramento, January 7, 1963. Defendant voluntarily confessed to all three fires. He told a detective of the North Sacramento Police Department he had climbed the stairs of the rooming house, and had started the fire by igniting a match and throwing a cigarette into a tin wastepaper basket, waiting while the flames spread up the wall. He had indicated on a diagram of the building the spot where the fire had been started. As to the garage fire,…