Peck

The defendant, jointly with one Elton Frazier, was charged with the crime of extortion. He demanded and received a separate trial, was found guilty by the jury, and was sentenced to state’s prison, and now prosecutes this appeal from the judgment.

On January 27, 1919, the prosecuting witness, Louis Wing, was living on a farm near Crescent Mills, in Plumas County. He testified that he had known the defendant Peck for fifteen or twenty years and the defendant Frazier for about three years; that, at about five minutes to 3, on the morning of January 27, 1919, the defendants came to his house, knocked at the door, and asked to come in. Peck said he was cold and asked Wing to build a fire, which he did. As to what then occurred, Wing testified: “Peck says, ‘Take a chair and sit down and be sociable,’ which I did in my underclothes, and he says to me, ‘Will you dance to my fiddling?’ I says, ‘I have, George, and I guess I can again,’ and he says, ‘Well, you are going to, now.’ I looked up—he had a gun stuck in my face. I asked him what he would do. He says he was going to kill me. I asked him what I had done. There was a rock put in some grain at the ranch when he was threshing there…