Greening

The defendant was convicted of arson in the second degree; and has appealed from the judgment.

1. The property which he is charged with having burned is described in the information as “a building belonging to the firm of Noonan and Towey, a partnership composed of P. H. Noonan and Peter Towey.” At the trial it was shown that Noonan and Towey were in partnership, engaged in business as butchers, and that the building was used by them in their business at the time it was burned; that the property had been bought by Noonan some years previously, and that he had afterwards conveyed an undivided half of it to Towey. *386 This was sufficient to identify the property destroyed with that which was laid in the information. (People v. Shainwold, 51 Cal. 468 .) It was immaterial for the purposes of the trial whether the building was held by Noonan and Towey as cotenants or as joint tenants. Real property may be owned by a partnership (Civ. Code, sec. 684), and the conveyance to the individual partners in which they are styled as composing a firm will be operative to vest in them the title according to the terms of the deed. (McCauley v. Fulton, 44 Cal. 355 .)

2. While the defendant was in…

I dissent. The superior court erred, in my opinion, in preventing a full and free cross-examination of the witnesses for the people. Aside from certain admissions of the defendant testified to by some of the witnesses, the evidence was quite *388 as consistent with the theory that the fire was started by the principal witness for the prosecution, who, by his own admission, was “in the employ of the city to catch a fellow setting fire to a barn,” as with the theory that the defendant started it. If the prosecution had deemed the evidence of defendant’s admission sufficient in itself to insure his conviction, there was no occasion to put in other evidence. But the other evidence was put in, and, presumably, because it was deemed necessary to secure a verdict. This being so, the defendant had a right to cross-examine these witnesses as fully as if their evidence stood alone. He had a right to show upon cross-examination all the facts and circumstances of the preconcerted arrangement between the officers and the witness Staley, and to argue from such circumstances that there was a motive and an opportunity for Staley himself to commit the crime which was charged upon him; and the…