People v. Quon Foo

CONREY, P. J.

The defendants were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to imprisonment for life. They appeal from the judgment and from the order denying their motion for a new trial.

The evidence is amply sufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury. It is not necessary to state the testimony.

[1]

The fact that some of the witnesses for the people had been witnesses at the coroner’s inquest and at the preliminary examination, and had there given testimony conflicting with their testimony at the later trial, might have affected their credibility but did not affect the right of the jury to believe their testimony at this trial. Upon that testimony, and the testimony of other witnesses, facts were established which point very strongly to the guilt of the defendants.

It is claimed that sundry errors were committed in the rulings of the court upon the admission of evidence. Very little argument has been presented and no authorities have been cited in support of these points.

[2]

The court did not err in overruling objections to the testimony of the witness Chadwick, who stated that at the time he arrested the defendant Wong Loy, another Chinaman said to the witness, in the presence of the defendant, Wong Loy, “That was the man,” and that in reply Wong Loy cursed back at him in Chinese, using certain words the meaning of which in English was stated by the witness, who testi

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tied that he knew the meaning of those Chinese words.

[3]

The witness Chadwick was permitted to testify to certain experiments made by him with a 32-caliber Savage automatic pistol for the purpose of showing how far a shell will be thrown from the pistol at certain different distances from the ground when the shell is ejected. Objections were made, one in particular being that there was no showing that the ammunition was the same as that used in .the killing of the deceased, Quon You. The apparent purpose of the questions was to show that certain empty shells afterward found in the room where the killing occurred were about in the location where they would have been if they were the shells from which the bullets which killed the deceased were fired. So far as we have been able to discover, the record does not show whether the shells found in the store were of the particular kind used in the experiments of the witness. It was stated, and is not denied, that the distance to which ejected shells would be thrown varies with different • kinds of ammunition. We think that the objection to this testimony should have been sustained.