People v. Ford

CRAIG, J.

The appellant was charged by information with the crime of murder. He was tried and by the jury’s verdict convicted of murder in the second degree. The trial court denied his motion for new trial, and this appeal is from that order, and from the judgment and sentence based upon such verdict. A consideration of two of the grounds urged for reversal requires a statement of the facts proven and of some of the evidence introduced.

About the hour of 11:15 P. M. of September 17, 1926, appellant was seen by a police officer staggering on one of the main streets of La Jolla. At that time appellant appeared unable to talk, but said he “was shot”; he was wet and quivering; the officer took him to the hospital, where the only thing said by appellant was “girl shot too”; he had two bullet wounds in his forehead and one on the top of his head; pieces of a flat bullet were extracted from under the scalp on the top of his head; the bullet was

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3'2-caliber; there were powder burns on his forehead. On the following morning a woman’s body was found in one of the summer houses at La Jolla park, near the beach; the deceased was one Anna Carleton; there was a bullet wound from left to right through the bridge of her nose, entering at the inner angle of the left eye, and a furrow was cut in the upper lid of the right eye; there was another bullet wound at the outer angle of the left side of her nose, near the alar, going straight through the head, into the base of the brain, which caused death; there were no powder burns on her face; however, there was a powder-stained bullet wound through the second joint of the ring finger of the left hapd and powder stains on the inside of the little finger and the middle finger of the same hand. Tracks which the shoes worn by appellant fitted led away from the summer house to the driveway, and from the driveway to the beach, for about fifty feet; on the rocks at the beach about fifty feet from the summer house a 32-caliber revolver was found, which contained five empty shells, and its appearance indicated that it had been fired within twelve hours previously to the time when found. Proof was also introduced as to the position of the body of the deceased when discovered, as well as of various articles of the summer house, at that time.

It is contended that the