People v. Hunter

PINCH, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of the crime of assault with a deadly weapon. He prosecutes this appeal

[317]

from the judgment and the order denying his motion for a new trial.

In August, 1924, defendant’s wife commenced an action against him for divorce. Thereafter she and their two children resided at the Bolden Apartments in Fort Bragg and the defendant occupied a room at the White House in the same town. On the 17th or 18th of September the defendant, who had not been in the habit of carrying a gun, purchased a revolver and a box of cartridges. In the afternoon of the 18th he asked his wife to let him take dinner with her and the children at her apartment that evening, saying he was going away the next day, and she consented. He spent the evening in the apartment with them and while there made statements from which it might be inferred that he intended to kill his wife and take Ms own life. His wife had difficulty in persuading him to leave but, upon her promise that he might return the next morning at 9 o’clock, he finally left. The next morning about 7:30 he called at a barber-shop of which he and his wife were both patrons and while there said to the proprietor, “I don’t think my wife will bother you any more.” He then went to his wife’s apartment and there took frequent drinks from a bottle of intoxicating liquor which he had with Mm. His wife testified that after the children left for school “he says to me, ‘If you have any arguments make them quick. . . . You are not going to leave this room until I do. I am going to bill you. We are both going to die on that bed together. I have stood enough of this.’ And I.got up out of my chair and threw my right arm around his neck and said, ‘No, let’s not do that, let’s be friends,’ and he stooped over and pulled at his pants leg and said, ‘No, I am going to use it.’ Q. Where did he have the gun! A. On his right leg on the outside in his sock and the sock was thin and it shown through his sock and was shiny and the whole print of it was there, . . . and he said, ‘No, I am going to do it,’ and bent over and "went at it that way (indicating) to get the gun. . . . He just made it like a madman. He had a garter on, which he never wore before and he was trying to unfasten it, when he said, ‘I am going to do it, I am going to do it,’ just as fast as he could, like that (indicating). It seems as I stuck my head and shoulders out of the window