People v. Dick

By the Court, Currey, C. J.: The defendant was indicted for the murder of S. M. Simpson, alleged to have been committed on the 13th of May, 1866, at the County of San Joaquin. The accused was tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree, and thereupon sentenced to be executed.

The transcript of the record contains no portion of the evidence given at the trial. The only alleged errors of which we can take notice arise from the charge of the Judge to the jury and the refusal by the Court to give certain instructions which counsel requested on behalf of the defendant.

The party who asks for a reversal of a judgment on the ground of errors committed upon the trial must show in what the errors consist, for this Court will not, as has been said, presume error unless the facts from which such a presumption can fairly be deduced are disclosed by the record. But it is [215]not in all cases necessary, in order to ascertain that a fatal error has been committed, that the evidence should be before the Court of review. If the action of the Court of which complaint is made be manifestly erroneous under any and every conceivable state of facts, or under the facts and circumstances of the case as they seem to have been assumed by the Court that tried the cause, this Court will not hesitate to review such action, notwithstanding the evidence may not be brought before us. (People v. Levison, 16 Cal. 98 ; People v. King, 27 Cal. 544.)

The Court, in charging the jury, assumed that the evidence implicating or tending to implicate the defendant in the crime of which he was accused, was of a circumstantial kind, and elaborated the subject of circumstantial evidence at great length before the jury. The instructions which the defendant’s counsel requested the Court to give to the jury were predicated of facts and circumstances which seem to have been proved, and which it was claimed on the part of the people warranted the jury in finding the defendant guilty of the murder of Simpson, while on the part of the defendant it was maintained that the circumstances in proof must not only all concur to show that the accused committed the crime, but that they were inconsistent with any other rational conclu*sion. We are therefore to assume from what the record contains that the evidence produced against the defendant was of facts and circumstances, from which it was the province of the jury to deduce the proper conclusion, and that the charge of the Court relates legitimately to the case as it stood upon the evidence before the jury. (People v. Barry, 31 Cal. 357.)