People v. Henry Quan Chuck

RICHARDS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment upon a verdict of conviction of the defendant of murder in the first degree, with his punishment fixed at life imprisonment, and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

The facts as presented by the chief witnesses for the prosecution were briefly these: Four Chinese persons were in the basement of a Chinese store on Jackson Street in San Francisco, upon the twentieth day of June, 1913, about 10 o’clock in the evening, when the defendant entered and asked for Fong Hung, the deceased. He was told that he was not in, but one of those present offered to telephone for him, which he did, and Fong Hung presently appeared; and defendant asked him for a loan of twenty-five dollars, to which the deceased replied that, “he had no money.” The defendant then asked “What are you going to do about it?” to which the deceased answered “What are you going to do about it?” and started to walk away. The defendant drew a pistol and fired several shots at the deceased, killing him almost instantly. He then threw away the weapon and fled up the street to another building. The officers who appeared presently on the scene, attracted by police whistles blown by the Chinese witnesses to the murder, went into this building, and at first arrested another Chinese who was acting suspiciously, and brought him to the spot of the crime, where the witnesses declined to identify him, but informed the officer that the defendant was the person who had done the shooting. They went back immediately and found the defendant in the building which the murderer had been seen to enter, and apprehended him. When brought to the scene of the homicide the four witnesses identified him as the

[473]

murderer; and, when called as witnesses in the case, all testified positively that they had seen him do the deed. The defense relied chiefly upon an

alibi,

which was not, however, established to the satisfaction of the jury, who returned a verdict of murder in the first degree.

The first point made by the defendant upon this appeal is that the court erred in its refusal to give an instruction upon the subject of manslaughter. This contention of the defendant must be based, under the authorities, upon the claim that there is sufficient evidence in the "case upon which the jury might predicate a verdict of manslaughter. The only bit of evidence which the defendant can find to base this claim upon is that contained in the brief interchange of words between the defendant and the deceased just before the homicide. The bare words of that conversation do not suffice to disclose or suggest a quarrel; nor to show any incitement by the deceased to any such heat of passion on the part of the defendant as would serve to justify a jury in reducing the defendant’s crime from murder to manslaughter; and that the jury who heard the evidence of this conversation did not so regard it is plain, for they refused by their verdict to reduce the defendant’s crime even to murder in the second degree, although they were instructed that they might do so. We must conclude therefore, that this episode immediately preceding the homicide was not of sufficient importance to have entitled the defendant to have an instruction upon the subject of manslaughter given, or to have the judgment reversed because the court, having also heard all the evidence, refused to so instruct the jury. The case of