Cramblit

An information charged defendant Cramblit with two violations and defendant Rawls with one violation of Penal Code section 496a. Essentially, the statute imposes criminal penalties on secondhand and junk dealers who fail to use due diligence to ascertain the authority of persons seeking to sell metal parts or wire of a sort ordinarily used by public utilities. 1 The trial court granted a defense motion to set aside the information. The People appeal.

Defendant Cramblit operated and defendant Rawls was employed at a used metals establishment. According to the prosecution evidence at the preliminary examination, an undercover police officer sold defendants 12 brass water meters without inquiry as to his identity or as to ownership of the meters. The officer was asked only to sign a receipt; he did so, using a fictitious name. On another day, defendant Cramblit bought 368 pounds of copper “telephone wire” from an undercover officer, who identified *479 himself by presenting an expired temporary driver’s license issued to a person whose physical description diverged enormously from the officer’s.

Defendants contended in the trial court, as they do on appeal, that section…