Spaulding

The appellant was charged by information with having committed in the county of Tulare the infamous crime defined by section 288a of the Penal Code. He was convicted by a jury, and appeals from the resultant judgment upon the grounds (1) that the People’s witnesses were accomplices, and that aside from their testimony “there was not a particle of evidence to show the commission of the offense charged in the information”; (2) that, assuming them to have entrapped the defendant, if they induced him to commit an offense which he would not otherwise have committed, the conviction cannot be sustained.

It appears that on January 31, 1926, appellant was engaged in conducting an automobile supply store known as Spaulding’s Filling Station, on the state highway, northerly from the town of Earlimart, in Tulare County; that on the afternoon of said date two deputy sheriffs of Kings County, named Pefley and Lant, appeared in the latter’s automobile at appellant’s establishment and purchased oil for the machine; that Lant retired to a lavatory in the rear of the store, and while he was absent Pefley sold the appellant four boxes of candy. Pefley testified that when he first exhibited samples…