Commonwealth v. Nasuti

Opinion by

Hirt, J.,

The defendant was convicted of arson and was sentenced. He had been a part owner of a small restaurant conducted in a single room in the Hardt Building on West Columbia Avenue in Philadelphia. The restaurant was about 1 1/2 feet below the street level. There were windows on the street side and also fronting on an alley in the rear. At 12:55 on the morning of March 17, 1952, Police Officer Walsh, in patrolling his beat, was on his way to change the controls on automatic traffic signals from normal sequence to blinker, at intersections in the neighborhood. As he passed the…