People v. Mitchell

Upon an information charging the crime of receiving stolen property, a felony, appellant was tried before a jury and found guilty as charged, after which conviction the court below sentenced her to serve a term of three months in the county jail. A motion for a new trial having been denied, she appealed, assigning as grounds for reversal the bar of the statute of limitations and insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the judgment.

The information was filed about two years after receipt of the property in question by the appellant. Reliance is placed upon the interpretation of sections 17 and 801 of the Penal Code, as announced in People v. Gray, 137 Cal. 267 [ 70 Pac. 20 ]. It was there held that an offense punished as a misdemeanor must for all purposes be deemed as such, and that an indictment therefor, filed more than one year after the commission of the offense, was barred by the statute of limitations. In Doble v. Superior Court, 197 Cal. 556 [ 241 Pac. 852 ], the Supreme- Court in denying a petition for a writ of prohibition, prior to trial, limited the application of section 17 of the Penal Code to “purposes after a judgment imposing other than imprisonment in the state…