People v. Ramsey

Opinion

BROWN (Gerald), P. J.

Defendants John Ramsey and Jeanne Ramsey, husband and wife, appeal their jury-tried convictions of manslaughter (Pen. Code, § 192) of their 130-day-old daughter Bessie'Ann. They were sentenced to prison.

We appointed a single counsel for both defendants on appeal. After briefs were filed, on our own motion we vacated the appointment and appointed separate counsel for each defendant.

[733]

Both defendants were represented below by the same attorney, the public defender.

The defendants and their six children, the oldest being eight, were an itinerant family. Bessie Ann was born in Madera, California, September 6, 1968. She was kept in the hospital 5 days longer than her mother because of internal bleeding. On October 30, 1968, Bessie Ann was taken to the Palo Verde Hospital in Blythe, California, suffering from convulsions, being unconscious, with head, arms and legs twitching. She weighed 7 pounds, 9% ounces. Dr. Berry administered injections to suppress the convulsions. He felt the Riverside General Hospital could give expert medical attention not available in Blythe, and he exhorted the mother to take the child to Riverside, a distance of about 170 miles, most of it through desert.

En route to Riverside, the Ramseys’ car broke down near or in Brawley. We are not told why defendants went this circuitous southern route. But without transportation, they remained in Brawley where Mr. Ramsey sought and obtained employment, working long night hours.

Mrs. Ramsey took Bessie Ann to the Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Brawley on January 14, 1969, about 7:45 p.m., where, despite medical aid, the child expired an hour later. Her blanket and diaper smelled strongly of urine. The autopsy physician reported a 5 ló-pound child, extremely emaciated, without food in the stomach and intestines, indicating Bessie Ann died of malnutrition due to starvation; she had not taken food for 24 to 48 hours, the starvation process had been going on for more than 48 hours and probably had been going on for weeks.

Mrs. Ramsey told an officer, who had followed the car speeding to the hospital, Bessie had been sick about a week; Mr. Ramsey had been unable to take the baby to a doctor, all her children had been small under age one; and she did not call the police to help because they might think she had not been feeding the baby.