People v. Freeman

GRIFFIN, J.,

pro tem.

The defendant in this action was accused in an indictment by the grand jury of Riverside County of the crime of murder. The case was tried before the court without a jury, defendant having waived a jury trial. The trial court rendered a verdict of involuntary manslaughter. The charge grew out of a collision of appellant’s car' with a power pole. One of the occupants of the car, Anna Mae Helm, suffered a fractured skull and died as a result of the injury.

Appellant urges as his sole ground of appeal that the evidence does not support the verdict and judgment and is insufficient to sustain it.

The transcript is very lengthy, the greater part of it being taken up with evidence of the alleged intoxication of the appellant and with other evidence contradicting the intoxication. A finding that appellant was intoxicated immediately prior to, at the time of, and for several hours after the time of the accident is amply supported by the evidence.

On the afternoon of March 9, 1936, appellant and a woman friend, Mrs. Spezialli, an Indian, visited the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Helm in Temecula. During the afternoon the appellant made trips to Temecula and Murietta purchasing wine and groceries. The evidence shows that both Mrs. Spezialli and the appellant were intoxicated that afternoon at

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the Helm home. At about five o’clock Mrs. Spezialli suggested taking the three daughters of the Helm family to a moving picture theater in Elsinore. Mrs. Helm objected but the father consented.

Appellant was driving a Buick coupe having a rumble seat. Seated next him was Pearl Helm, aged 16; on her right was Mrs. * Spezialli with Anna Mae, aged 12, on her lap, and in the rumble seat was Hazel, aged 14, riding alone. As appellant drove down the highway, an open, improved and paved road, his erratic driving caused Pearl to take hold of the steering wheel and pull the car back onto the road. After this, and for some distance, appellant managed to keep the car on the highway but very shortly thereafter he again lost control of the car and it zig-zagged over the road and at a point where there was a slight curve the car left the paved portion of the highway on the right-hand side and plunged across the gutter into an alfalfa field and crashed head-on into a power pole causing the injuries from which Anna Mae died next day. All this happened in less than ten minutes after they had left the Helm home. All occupants of the car, except the driver, were seriously injured. At the time of the accident there was no traffic on that portion of the highway here concerned, no approaching or overtaking vehicles.