People v. Clifton

ANGELLOTTI, C. J.

The defendant was convicted of murder of the first degree for the killing of one Henry Smith on April 9, 1920, and was adjudged to suffer death. He appeals from the judgment and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

The killing was admitted, but it was claimed on the trial that it was done in lawful self-defense. In view of the record it cannot reasonably be contended that the jury was not justified in concluding otherwise and finding the defendant guilty. It is earnestly urged, however, that the evidence was not such as to justify a verdict of murder of the first degree, for want of testimony to support a conclusion of the presence of the deliberation and premeditation essential to such a verdict.

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While there was evidence which, would strongly justify a claim before the jury that the homicide was the result of a drunken quarrel between defendant and deceased, without any element of deliberation and premeditation on the part of defendant, there was, in our opinion, sufficient evidence upon which to found a contrary conclusion. Deceased and defendant and two women, all negroes, were living in a small four-room shack, fronting on an alley between O, P, Fourth, and Fifth Streets, in the city of Sacramento. Apparently all were ignorant and superstitious. Deceased was living with one of these women, a Miss Fisher, and the other woman, a Miss Watson, had been an occupant of the house for only a few days. The relations between defendant and deceased had been very friendly, so far as the evidence shows, to within a couple of days of the quarrel, and defendant had originally taken up his abode in the house at the invitation of deceased. The only evidence of any trouble between them prior to the fatal quarrel was that of Miss Watson. She testified to a verbal altercation between them a day or two before with relation to the defendant carrying and using red pepper as a protection against evil spirits in and about the house, which ended in defendant drawing a knife, and being pushed out through a door by Miss Fisher. She also testified that the day before the homicide deceased accused Miss Fisher, in

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the presence of defendant, of giving defendant money and taking care of him out of his (deceased’s) labor. She said that he also told Miss Fisher to make defendant leave the house and that he would not stay there if defendant remained. She also testified that during the morning of the day of the homicide defendant sharpened his knife in her room and, after sharpening it, said it would do the work. In none of these statements was she corroborated by other witnesses, and her evidence may well be claimed to be somewhat rambling and unconvincing. The question of her credibility was, however, a question for the jury. Later in the day defendant and deceased, both of whom had apparently been drinking previously, together with a white man called “Pat,” who has never been produced as a witness, were in the dining-room of this house, engaged in drinking and talking. According to defendant, a quarrel commenced between him and deceased on the question as to which of the two should go out after more liquor, and deceased attacked him with a butcher-knife, but there is nothing except this testimony of defendant to suggest that deceased had a knife or was armed. The evidence was such as to fully warrant the jury in concluding that he was unarmed. No witness professes to have seen the commencement of the physical encounter. The two who say they witnessed any part of the encounter, a negro named Miller and Miss Watson, found the two grappling on the floor of the room, Miss Watson saying that defendant was on top of deceased and that deceased was pleading with him to stop cutting him, and Miller saying that each man was on his side. According to both of the witnesses deceased was then bleeding badly. The defendant then got up and left the house and was arrested a short time thereafter in the immediate locality, near the corner of Fifth and P Streets, where he was standing against a fence. The knife, with blood upon it, was found in his pocket. Deceased, who died the same day, had received several small knife wounds, one being between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, and a mortal wound about nine inches in length across the abdomen, portions of the small intestines being severed. The case was such, assuming the reliability of Miss Watson as a witness, as to warrant a conclusion that there was some feeling of hostility between the two men, and