People v. Murphy

JAMES, J.

Defendant was charged with having, on the fifteenth day of April, 1915, murdered William Murphy. Upon her trial a verdict of manslaughter was returned by the jury and the court sentenced her to serve a term of two years’ imprisonment in the state penitentiary. Motion for a new trial having been made and denied, an appeal was taken from that adverse order. An appeal was also taken from the judgment.

Deceased was the husband of appellant and at the time of the alleged homicide the two were living on a little ranch in the neighborhood of La Canada in the county of Los Angeles. Their habitation consisted of a tent, adjacent to which was a small wooden building. Fruit trees and grape vines were set about the place. Some time after, but near the noon hour, on April 15th, a neighbor named Lane, whose ranch adjoined that upon which the Murphys lived, heard the sound of a gun shot, which was followed by heavy groans, coming from the direction of the Murphy tent. He waited a moment and then started, as he testified, on a run in the direction from which the sound of the shot came. On his way he motioned to another neighbor at work in a vineyard to follow him. Lane testified that when he arrived at the Murphy place he found Murphy lying upon the ground in the driveway about thirty-five feet from the tent. His hat and pipe were on the ground a few feet away from his head, and he was groaning as though in great pain. Lane at that time saw no gun, but noticed a dead cat, which lay near Murphy’s feet. A few moments later another neighbor arrived, and at this time Mrs. Murphy came from within the tent where the couple had been in the habit of sleeping. Murphy was carried into the tent and placed upon a bed, a physician was immediately summoned and the man died within the next hour and a half. Before his death his clothes were removed and it was found that a charge of gun shot, such as is ordinarily used for the killing of birds, had entered his body from the left and front and slightly above the hip. The charge of shot had passed, in part, first through the lower part of the left arm and then

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on into the abdominal cavity, where it had cut the intestines and severed at least one large artery. Mrs. Murphy, the appellant, was in the tent at the time Lane arrived on the scene. After Murphy had been carried into the house, some of the neighbors asked her for hot water, and she said there was none, and when they requested her to have some heated she started to get up from the bed where she was sitting, but seemed unable to walk and she then said that she could not do what was requested of her. It was the claim of the prosecution that she was intoxicated at the time, and the evidence tended to show that such was her condition. The testimony further, in so far as her actions at that time were attempted to be described, was to the effect that she manifested no great grief over the condition of her husband, except that she once addressed an inquiry to the wounded man, calling him by his given name and asking him if he was going to leave her; also that she had litted his head with her hands in a considerate way, indicating some concern upon her part as to the husband’s condition. One witness testified that on the night preceding the alleged homicide he had met Murphy and the appellant in the city of Glendale, which appeared to be the place where the Murphys changed cars to go to their home. The witness testified that both Murphy and his wife appeared to be under the influence of liquor and that he, at their invitation, drank whiskey from a bottle which they had in their possession. A bottle containing whiskey and one containing wine were found in the tent after Murphy had been shot. This witness further testified that Murphy and his wife were quarreling and that Mrs. Murphy threatened her husband by saying that she would “fix him with a shot gun,” or words to that effect. The testimony of the undertaker who went to remove the dead body of Murphy was to the effect that when he questioned appellant as to how the shooting occurred she said that she did not know; that her husband had gone out from the tent and that she had heard the shot and that Murphy immediately called to her, saying, “Irene, I am hurt”; that she had run out from the tent and found her husband lying on the ground; that she had tried to lift him up, but being unable to carry him, had returned to the tent to get a pillow with the purpose of placing it under his head, and that she was just about to return to him when the witness Lane arrived on the scene. She