Court Opinion

ID: 9540925
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:20:54.721522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:01:44.470614
License: Public Domain

SPENCE, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
While I agree with certain conclusions reached in the majority opinion, I cannot agree with the conclusion that the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction of first degree murder.
The majority concede that the evidence is ‘ ‘ unquestionably sufficient to support a conviction of second degree murder.” In other words, it is conceded that there is ample evidence to sustain the charge that defendant unlawfully killed the deceased with malice aforethought (Pen. Code, §187). But the majority conclude that the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction of murder of the first degree because, it is asserted, there is neither evidence of torture nor of deliberation and premeditation. (Pen. Code, § 189.)- It is from this last mentioned conclusion that I must dissent, as well as from the decision which modifies the judgment of the trial court by reducing the degree of the crime to murder of the second degree.
It would serve no useful purpose to set forth the evidence in elaborate detail. A brief summarization and a statement of a few salient facts should suffice.
Defendant, who was a strong, young man of 29 years, weighing 175 pounds, and who had previously been convicted of the crime of manslaughter, administered a brutal, fatal beating upon his victim, who was a frail, elderly man of 82 years, weighing 95 pounds. The attack was unprovoked and continued over a period of about 15 minutes. It was in two distinct phases. Defendant administered the first blow upon his victim in the yard behind the house. When the neighbors shouted at defendant, he then, according to his statement to the police and to his own sworn testimony, “drug him (the deceased) ... by the hair of his head” from the yard into the house. The various rooms of the house were the scenes of the second phase of the attack, which lasted until the officers arrived after being summoned by the neighbors. There *81were no eyewitnesses to this phase of the attack but a neighbor testified that he heard bumping and thumping noises inside the house for 10 or 15 minutes. Defendant gave varying accounts of the occurrences within the house, telling different stories: first, to the officers following his arrest; second, upon the trial of the main issue; and third, upon the trial of the insanity plea. When confronted with these discrepancies upon the trial of the insanity plea, he was asked, “What is the reason for changing your story ? ”; to which he answered, “It may benefit me.”
The evidence clearly indicates that defendant chased his victim about the house inflicting terrific punishment upon him. There was blood on the porch, and on the walls and floor of practically every room in the house. The stove and stovepipe had been knocked out of place and some of the furniture had been broken during the affray. When the officers arrived, they found deceased had been beaten “practically beyond recognition.” Physical examination showed that deceased’s nose “was crushed almost flat”; that his eyes were swollen shut; that there was a fracture of the lower jaw and a complete fracture of the upper jaw; that there were several fractures of the skull; that the brain had been “split completely open” and “was literally pulverized over the back portion of the two frontal sinuses.” Other injuries were described by the doctors, including abdominal injuries, but the foregoing recital sufficiently shows the nature and severity of the resulting damage. The doctors further testified that this damage was far more extensive than is found as the result of a fall.
Defendant does not question the finding of the jury that he was sane when he committed this fiendish attack, and the only extenuating circumstance upon which he now relies is his claim that he was drunk as the time. The vice of the majority opinion rests in the fact that it accepts as true practically all of the evidence of defendant’s witnesses regarding the extent of defendant’s drinking and ignores the direct conflict in the evidence relating to his condition at the time in question. The arresting officers and the officers who talked with defendant immediately following his arrest testified that he was not drunk, and that he did not show any sign of intoxication. This testimony of the officers finds corroboration in defendant’s ability to relate, when he saw fit to do so, the details of the struggle, and also in some of the evidence given by defendant’s own witnesses. All conceded that defendant *82walked straight and that he talked without thickness of tongue. On cross-examination, one of defendant’s witnesses admitted that defendant “was not yet drunk” when he was taken home. Another admitted that she couldn’t say that defendant was “drunk.” The jury was therefore entirely justified in disbelieving the testimony of defendant’s witnesses regarding the amount of drinking which defendant had done, and in concluding that defendant was not drunk when the crime was committed. Under these circumstances, it is not the province of a reviewing court to weigh the conflicting evidence and to accept as true the defendant’s evidence which has been rejected by the jury.
Assuming then that the jury was justified in concluding that defendant was neither insane nor drunk and that he was therefore responsible for his acts at the time that he committed the murder, I am of the opinion that the jury was further justified in concluding that defendant was guilty of murder of the first degree. The evidence appears ample to show both that the murder was committed by torture, and that it was deliberate and premeditated. This was not a situation in which death was caused by a single act, such as strangulation, which the majority states is “not necessarily murder by torture,” but it was a situation in which there was a prolonged attack involving numerous, merciless blows, which attack was broken into two phases by the interval during which defendant dragged the deceased by the hair of his head from the yard into the house. Accepting the tests set forth in the majority opinion, the jury was justified here in concluding that there was ‘an intent to cause pain and suffering in addition to death”; that “the killer [was] not satisfied with killing alone”; that “the assailant’s intent was to cause cruel suffering on the part of the object of the attack.” If the dragging of a person by the hair of the head for a considerable distance during the progress of a prolonged beating, such as that inflicted by defendant upon his victim, is insufficient to sustain a finding of the necessary intent to torture (that is, to cause cruel pain and suffering in addition to death), it is difficult to determine where the majority would draw the line. Furthermore, the jury was likewise justified in finding from all the evidence that the interval between the first blow delivered in the yard and the remaining blows delivered in the house gave ample time for deliberation and premeditation, and that defendant thereafter proceeded to kill his victim, not alone “with malice aforethought” (Pen. *83Code, § 187), but also with that deliberation and premeditation which characterizes the crime as murder of the first degree. (Pen. Code, § 189.)
In my opinion, both the judgment of conviction and the order denying the motion for a new trial should be affirmed.
Edmonds, J., concurred.