Melson

The defendant was convicted of the crime of petit larceny, after having suffered two prior convictions for grand larceny. The information, among other things, alleges that on or about the twenty-second day of November, 1926, in the county of San Joaquin, the defendant did “wil fully and unlawfully steal, take and carry away a quantity of copper wire of the value of $195.00 in gold coin of the Government of the United States and the said property was then and there the personal property of William H. Ford, doing business under the firm name and style of River Rock and Gravel Company.”

Upon this appeal, it is urged that the conviction of the defendant was had upon the testimony of an accomplice insufficiently corroborated; that there was no "sufficient proof of ownership of the property alleged to have been stolen; that the court erred in its instructions to the jury, and that the district attorney was guilty of prejudicial misconduct in his argument to the jury.

The record shows that some time previous to the commission of the alleged offense the defendant was living with his wife in a house situated on a small tract of land a short distance from the town of Tracy, in the county…