People v. Floris

KNIGHT, J.

Appellant was charged with murder, and upon trial was convicted of the crime of manslaughter. He now seeks a reversal of the judgment of conviction upon the sole ground that the evidence is not sufficient to sustain the verdict.

About 8 o’clock on the evening of October 23, 1927, the deceased, Antonio Mariscal, was stabbed in the neck and died instantly. The homicide occurred on a public street in North Richmond, Contra Costa County, during a quarrel which appellant had provoked with three men named Marcus, Nougiera, and Alameda. At the trial appellant denied the killing, but his guilt was established mainly by the testimony of the three men mentioned; and on this appeal he concedes that' the evidence is conflicting, and also that if the testimony of the three witnesses mentioned be true it is legally sufficient to support the conviction; but claims that Mariscal was doubtless stabbed by either Marcus, Nougiera, or Alameda, and that in order to fasten the crime falsely upon him they committed perjury in giving their testimony.

The law is well settled that a reviewing court has not the power to set aside a verdict unless it clearly appears that upon no hypothesis whatever is there sufficient substantial evidence in the record to support the verdict. As

[336]

said in

People

v.

Tom Woo,

181 Cal. 315 [184 Pac. 389]: “In passing upon this question we will not attempt to determine the weight of the evidence, but will decide

otiIj

whether upon the face of the evidence it can be held that sufficient facts could not have been found by the jury to warrant the inference of guilt. For it is the function of the jury in the first instance, and of the trial court after the verdict, to determine what facts are established by the evidence, and before the verdict of the jury, which has been approved by the trial court, can be set aside on appeal upon the grounds we are discussing it must be made clearly to appear that upon no hypothesis whatever is there sufficient substantial evidence to support the conclusion reached in the court below. . . . We must assume in favor of the verdict the existence of every fact which the jury could have reasonably deduced from the evidence, and then determine whether such facts are sufficient to support the verdict.” In the case of