People v. Crimmin

FINCH, P. J.

The defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction of the crime of manslaughter and from the order denying his motion for a new trial.

At about 11:30 A. M. March 18, 1921, the defendant was arrested for drunkenness at Stockton and placed in the “drunk cell” of the county jail with other intoxicated men. At 4:10 P. M. the jailer entered the cell to give the prisoners their meals and found them all asleep. He called them two or three times, but did not succeed in awakening them. At 10:15 that evening one of the prisoners was found dead upon the cell floor, the skull fractured in several places, some of the bones of the face broken, the neck bruised and dislocated, and with blood on the face and hair. The defendant at that time was lying in his bunk. His° shoes and pants were bloody. The officer said to him: “That man is dead. Did you do it?” The defendant replied: “I guess I will be tried for murder.” One of the witnesses testified that between 8 and 9 o’clock the next morning the defendant said: “I have been drinking very heavy. ... I have been drinking alcohol.” On being asked if he hit the deceased the defendant said: “Yes, I hit him; he annoyed me in my cell, pulling my clothes, and I think I knocked him down. ... I went back and went to bed, and he came after me again. ... I got up and hit him again.” When asked if he kicked the deceased and why, the defendant replied: “I think so. ... I think he called me a son-of-a-bitch. ” Another witness gave substantially the same testimony and stated that the defendant said: “Well, it seems like a dream. ... I guess I got the delirium tremens.”

At the trial the defendant testified that for ten days prior to the homicide he had been “drinking denatured alcohol, lemon extract, Jamaica ginger and wintergreen”; that the night of the homicide he heard voices calling bim vile names and threatening to kill him; that he saw a horse which was singing a song called “Casey Jones”; that he saw a cat dancing a jig; that he noticed hands and rats and swarms of red ants; and he related other things which

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he imagined he saw and experienced. Basing their answers on defendant’s testimony, several physicians testified that in their opinion he was insane at the time of the homicide. Prom October, 1914, to May, 1915, the defendant was confined in the state hospital at Stockton for insanity produced by intoxication. In 1917 he was in the Merced County hospital a month for alcoholism.