People v. Phillips

THOMPSON (IRA F.), J.

By an information filed on December 21, 1923, by the district attorney of Los Angeles County the defendant was charged with the crime of forgery, alleged to have been committed on December 11, 1923. The defendant interposed a plea of “not guilty” and also one of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” His trial was set for February 11, 1924, but he absconded and was not re-apprehended until April 29, 1929. His trial upon the first plea came on for hearing on July 25, 1929, and on the second plea, on the day following. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and also found the defendant sane. The court denied his motion for a new trial and he is here upon

[706]

an appeal from the judgment and from the order refusing to vacate the verdict.

The appellant raises but one question. During the first trial he offered testimony to show that his mental condition was subnormal, it being the contention of his counsel that there is “between the state where a person is normal mentally and the'state where he is legally insane, a fixed twilight zone where he is neither insane nor normal mentally.” This proof was tendered “for the purpose of showing that he was in such a state of mind he did not entertain an intent to defraud, which is the gist of the crime on which” the appellant was being tried. The quotations are taken from the offer of proof of counsel during the trial and clearly and succinctly set forth the theory he had in mind. And perhaps the question here will be made more clear if we also set down an excerpt from appellant’s brief which concisely states the proposition, as follows: “The trial court erred in refusing to allow appellant to introduce evidence at his trial on his plea of not guilty regarding his subnormal condition, not amounting to insanity as affecting the question of the intent or lack of intent with which the alleged criminal act was committed.”

Counsel for appellant, while recognizing the force of the opinion in

People

v.

Troche,

206 Cal. 35 [273 Pac. 767], attempt to distinguish the instant cause therefrom. Their argument is plausible and earnest, but without substance, as a few references to the language of that decision will demonstrate. It is there said: “The arguments touching the validity of these provisions have been advanced from three points of view: First . . . second, that, when properly construed, the statute eliminates from the consideration of the jury during the trial of the general issue the question of the ‘legal insanity’ of the defendant—the only kind of insanity which excuses one from punishment for a crime committed—but does not prevent the introduction of evidence tending to establish the mental condition of the accused at the time the offense was committed,