People v. Reed

THE COURT.

John Reed and John Thurman were convicted of murder in the first degree. The jury recommended life imprisonment for Thurman; Reed was sentenced to die. They appeal from the judgment and the order denying their motions for a new trial.

[406]

The evidence establishes the following facts: George Stephenson, the deceased, lived alone in a cabin on the edge of the Colorado River near the little settlement of Crossroads, located in the southeast corner of San Bernardino County. He was sixty-nine years of age and received old age pension checks monthly in the amount of $40. Prom these payments he had saved about $300 or $350 which he carried on his person in a billfold. When making purchases at the stores in Crossroads, it was not unusual for him to exhibit his savings and to exchange small bills for ones of larger denomination.

Down the dirt road about 150 feet from Stephenson’s cabin was another cabin occupied by Henry Williams, an elderly negro. On the evening of Friday, March 15, 1940, Stephenson visited Williams for about a quarter of an hour. Shortly after Stephenson left to return to his own cabin, Williams heard him call in an unusually loud voice, “What does all this mean? What is this all about?” Then all was quiet. Williams became uneasy and after a few minutes seized an ice pick and started for the Stephenson cabin. As he was proceeding along the dirt road which skirted the dense arrow weeds separating the two cabins, he saw two men come running from the direction of Stephenson’s cabin. One man came within eight or ten feet of him. This man he later identified as Reed. The other man appeared tall and thin, but was not otherwise clearly visible. Williams then proceeded to the cabin, but finding no one there, hastened to a nearby gas station and persuaded the proprietor to drive back with him. The latter found Stephenson a few yards beyond the cabin, lying just at the brink of the river bed, bound and gagged, with his head badly beaten. He died a few hours later at the hospital. Upon search of his body and premises neither his billfold nor his money could be found.

For several months before the commission of the crime John Reed had lived in the vicinity of Crossroads and patronized the same stores in Crossroads as the deceased. One week before the commission of the crime he secured a ride from Phoenix, where he had been working, to Parker, a town in Arizona not far from Crossroads, with a friend named Cox. At this time Reed had little or no money. He stayed in a cabin with Cox and another man named West, paying nothing