Court Opinion

ID: 9611992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:02:26.503193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:18.534426
License: Public Domain

CARTER, J.
I dissent. It is an unwarranted invasion of the province of the jury to hold that defendant was not prejudiced by the erroneous charge merely because, in the opinion of a majority of this court, the evidence “leaves no doubt whatever that the murder committed by defendant was murder of the first degree. ’ ’ The fact that concededly the evidence “was sufficient to sustain a verdict of murder in the first degree” is beside the point. Whether upon that evidence defendant should have been adjudged guilty of first degree murder or of a lesser crime, or acquitted, was for the jury and the jury alone to say. It is not within the power of a trial court, even upon uncontradicted evidence, to direct a verdict of guilty in a criminal case, nor is it within the power of an appellate court to direct such a verdict by indirection. Yet the majority opinion does just that in its conclusion that “As we view the uncontradicted evidence presented, the jury could not properly have arrived at any verdict other than a verdict finding defendant guilty of murder of the first degree, and the only real question presented for the jury’s determination was that of the penalty to be imposed. We therefore conclude that the error in the challenged instructions, dealing with the subject of the degrees of the murder, may not be treated as prejudicial. ’ ’
Defendant’s uncontradicted account of the manner in which the killing occurred left for determination by the jury but one real issue (other than punishment), and it was upon that issue, deliberation and premeditation, that the utterly confusing and erroneous instructions had bearing. The effect of the erroneous charge was therefore to take from the jurors the one matter to be determined by them. In other words, the undisputed facts showed that defendant’s crime was murder of the first degree, if his specific intent to kill the deceased *225was carried out with deliberation and premeditation. Whether these latter elements were present was the vital question for the jury under proper instructions. If the jurors were to be instructed in a vein which emphasized the rapidity with which thoughts may follow each other, fairness required a further instruction placing at least equal emphasis on the true meaning of the terms deliberation and premeditation. As stated in People v. Bender, 27 Cal.2d 164, 185 [163 P.2d 8] : “. . . While the jury may be told that the brain can function rapidly they must not be misled into thinking that an act can at the same time be hasty, hurried, and deliberate, or impulsive, unstudied, and premeditated. The extent of the reflection in every case, if it is to pass the test, must fairly and reasonably meet the ordinary and unquestioned significations of the test words. It is irrefragable that (in cases of the type now before us) the statutes of California purport to authorize , putting a person to his death only where his act of killing was truly deliberate and premeditated; i. e., was murder of the first degree.”
From defendant’s confession and the absence of any other evidence of motive it would seem that the murder was the result of his confused association of his rancor against his ex-wife with all women, so that in giving vent to his intense desire to kill his ex-wife, he stabbed Mrs. Fouts. There was apparently nothing to break this confused conception during defendant’s prolonged spree of brooding, drinking, and visiting with Mrs. Fouts. It is true that the evidence, if submitted to the jury under proper instructions, would have supported a verdict of murder of the first degree, but under that evidence it would also have been possible for the jury to conclude that the murder was of a lesser degree in that, since defendant had seen and been introduced to Mrs. Fouts for the first time only a few hours before the killing, apparently the intent to substitute her as a victim in place of the ex-wife, was not arrived at as the result of a dispassionate, cool, and deliberate premeditation, but was the result of an impulse engendered during the short period the two were together. In short, had the jurors been properly instructed, they might or might not have concluded that the killing was “willful, deliberate, and premeditated,” as those terms are used in the statute defining murder of the first degree (Pen. Code, § 189). A lesser verdict returned by them could not have been disturbed.
*226The jurors should have been told in substance that “Neither the statute nor the court undertakes to measure in units of time the length of the period during which the thought must be pondered before it can ripen into an intent which is truly deliberate and premeditated. The time would vary with different individuals and under differing circumstances. The true test is not the duration of time as much as it is the extent of the reflection. Thoughts may follow each other with great rapidity and cold, calculated judgment may be arrived at quickly, but the express requirement for a concurrence of deliberation and premeditation excludes from murder of the first degree those homicides (not specifically enumerated in the statute) which are the result of mere unconsidered or rash impulse hastily executed.” (People v. Bender, 27 Cal. 2d, supra, 184-185; People v. Thomas, 25 Cal.2d 880, 900 [156 P.2d 7].)
It marks no innovation in the law to state that even where there is undisputed evidence of first degree murder, convincing in the eyes of an appellate court, erroneous instructions which bear vitally upon the proper definition of the crime, must be deemed to have been prejudicial. Such has always been the law of this state. Thus it is said in People v. Valencia (1872), 43 Cal. 552, at p. 556: “We are not justified in saying that the error [an instruction omitting from the definition of murder in the first degree the essential qualities of deliberation and premeditation] was productive of no injury to the defendants, because we may be satisfied that the jury ought to have found from the evidence, as they did, that the defendants are guilty of murder in the first degree. The question as to the deliberation and premeditation'of the defendants is one which is peculiarly the province of the jury to determine; and should we sustain the charge of the Court, because of the apparently satisfactory character of the evidence, that question would virtually be withdrawn from the jury.”
Again it was said in People v. Chew Sing Wing (1891), 88 Cal. 268, at page 270 [25 P. 1099] : “There is no question arising in a trial for murder more peculiarly or purely one of fact than the one whether the killing was done with deliberation and premeditation, or in the decision of which so much is necessarily left to the sound sense, discretion, and experience of the jury, who, under the constitution, are' made the exclusive triers of that issue. In People v. Ah Lee, 60 Cal. 86, *227this court said: ‘And we think it to be well settled in this state that it was error to instruct the jury that there were no circumsances in the case to reduce the offense below that of murder in the first degree. The question whether the killing was perpetrated with the deliberation and premeditation necessary to constitute, it murder in the first degree was one which it was “peculiarly the province of the jury to determine” ’. . . . Nor can this court weigh the testimony for the purpose of determining whether the verdict of the jury is not right, upon the evidence [quoting from People v. Valencia, supra]. ’ ’
Here the court did not submit to the jury any issue of fact whatsoever on the question of degree; not even in the erroneous instructions as to what would constitute premeditation and deliberation were the jurors permitted to determine any issue of fact. They were told that if there existed in the mind of the defendant at the time of the slaying “the specific intent to take life” then the offense “would of course be murder of the first degree.” Defendant, by his own admission, conceded the existence of such specific intent. That fact never was questioned by the defendant. Hence the instruction that if that specific intent existed the offense “would of course be murder of the first degree,” left the jury no possible alternative, unless they directly disobeyed that instruction, but to return a verdict of murder of the first degree.
-In this case, therefore, there was not merely error in instructions, but a total failure, in effect, to accord the defendant a trial by jury.
For the foregoing reasons I would reverse the judgment.
Schauer, J. concurred.