People v. Szafcsur

LORIGAN, J.

Appellant was convicted of the murder of his wife and sentenced to death and from the judgment and an order denying his motion for a new trial appeals.

Trouble had occurred between appellant and his wife and she bad instituted divorce proceedings. The evidence shows that prior to the killing appellant had contemplated the death -of his wife and his own suicide. The parties lived on Frederick Street in the city of San Francisco near Golden Gate Park. On the morning of April 4, 1910, appellant purchased a pistol and ammunition and about 7:30 in the evening went home and deliberately fired three shots therefrom into the body of his wife causing her instant death. He immediately ran from the house to Golden Gate Park and there shot himself in the head inflicting, however, a scalp wound from which he readily recovered. A police officer, immediately notified of appellant’s attempted suicide, found him lying in the park, wounded as stated, but conscious, and with a five-chamber revolver in his hand, three chambers being empty and the other two containing shells—one exploded, the other intact.

On the trial the appellant did not take the stand; the killing of his wife by him was not denied, the sole defense interposed in his behalf being that he was insane at the time he killed her.

On this appeal the following points are made for a reversal: that the court erred in admitting in evidence the revolver found in the possession of the defendant in the park and

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which was taken from him by the police officer, because it was not sufficiently identified as the weapon with which he killed his wife; that for the same reason it erroneously allowed testimony by the same officer of statements by defendant concerning the purchase of a revolver and ammunition on the morning of the killing; that the court erred in commenting before the jury on the weight of certain evidence, and that both the court and the district attorney were guilty of misconduct prejudicial to the cause of the defendant.

None of these points have any merit and in ordinary cases might be disposed of with short notice. As, however, this is a capital case, we will consider them separately.