People v. Singh

HART, Acting P. J.

The defendant was charged by information filed in the superior court of Butte County with the crime of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit the crime of murder. The jury before and by whom the cause was tried found the accused guilty of the crime

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of assault with a deadly weapon. He made a motion for a new trial, which motion was denied, and he brings the case to this court on appeal from the judgment and the order denying said motion.

The defendant for a reversal submits and insists upon the validity of but one point, to wit: That the court erred, to the prejudice of his rights, in overruling his objection to the testimony of the prosecution’s witness, Sixt, that in or near the month of June, 1925, the defendant, speaking to said witness of the assaulted party, one Banta Singh, declared that he (defendant) did not like Banta Singh, and that he (defendant) “would kill said Banta if he (said Banta) took any more wood.” The grounds of the objection to said testimony were that it was “irrelevant, immaterial, incompetent and too remote.”

The defendant interposed as in resistance to the crime charged against him the plea of self-defense. The People claimed that the assault was wholly unprovoked and without excuse. Testimony was introduced in support, of the respective antithetical theories. Thus the importance to the People’s case of testimony disclosing that the defendant had, prior to the time of the commission of the assault, nursed a feeling of bitter antipathy towards Banta Singh, the assaulted party, and had, prior to said time, threatened to kill or inflict bodily injury upon the person of Banta Singh, is plainly apparent, and will be the more conspicuously exposed by a brief reference herein to the evidence disclosing the immediate circumstances leading to and culminating in the assault as detailed by a number of persons that witnessed the near tragedy and testified on behalf of the People. First, it may be noted that, as is to be implied from the fact that the point above indicated involves the single and only ground upon which the conclusion reached below is attacked, no question as to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict is here raised.

A recital of the facts in a general way will be based upon the testimony given for the People by certain parties who witnessed the assault, there being no substantial divergence in the stories of the assault as told by them.