People v. Arnold

California Supreme Court May 8, 1897 No. Crim. No. 234Published

Before: Fleet

AI Brief

AI-generated · verify before citing

Holding. The court held that evidence of a spouse's prior infidelity is inadmissible to justify assault, that a defendant who testifies waives the statutory protection against disclosure of a prior felony conviction, and that a trial court's failure to instruct on a lesser included offense is not error absent a request.

Issues

Whether evidence of a spouse's prior infidelity is admissible to mitigate or justify an assault.
Whether a defendant who testifies waives the statutory protection against the disclosure of a prior felony conviction.
Whether the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury on simple assault without a request from the defendant.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“It was wholly immaterial, since it would not, if true, have justified the assault.”

“The failure to give it, in the absence of such request, has been repeatedly held not error.”

Synopsis

Criminal Law—Assault with Intent' to Murder—Evidence—Known Infidelity of Wife — Justification—Rebuttal of Malice.—Upon the trial of a charge for an assault with intent to murder, committed by defendant upon the person of his wife, evidence that he bad been informed that his wife was running with other men for immoral and illicit purposes, and that at the time of the assault he supposed she was going away for some such purpose, is not admissible to justify the assault charged; and where his own testimony showed that he had been aware of such lewd conduct on her part for eighteen months, and it was not claimed or offered to be shown that defendant was acting under the influence of passion aroused by any receut information of his wife’s infidelity, such evidence is not admissible to rebut malice in the assault.

Id.—Conviction of Assault with Deadly Weapon—Rejection of Evidence Subtantially Given—Harmless Ruling.—Where the defendant was convicted of the lesser offense of assault with a deadly weapon, of which malice is not. an essential ingredient, and evidence of his wife’s infidelity was in substantial effect placed before the jury, the rejection of other evidence of such infidelity, for the purpose of rebutting malice under a charge of assault with intent to murder is harmless.

Id. —Charge of Prior Conviction of Felony—Confession—Evidence— Impeachment—Question as to Prior Conviction—Construction of Code—Waiver.—The purpose of section 1093 of the Civil Code, which provides that where the defendant has confessed a charge of prior conviction, the clerk in reading the indictment or information shall omit therefrom all that i*elafces to such previous conviction, is to give the defendant the benefit of withholding from the jury a knowledge of such prior conviction in cases other than those where the defendant by the conduct of his case, in becoming a witness in his own behalf, subjects himself to the same tests of credibility by impeachment or otherwise as any other witness, and was not designed to change or affect the ordinary rules of evidence in his favor, and where the defendant, when arraigned, confessed a charge in the information of a prior conviction of felony, and afterward testifies in his own behalf, he must be deemed to have waived the privilege given by that section, and may be asked on cross-examination by the prosecution, for the purpose of impeachment, if he had not been previously convicted of a felony.

Id.—Instructions — Failure to Instruct as to Assault—Absence ob* Request.—Where the defendant admitted that he struck his wife on the head with a stick and knocked her down, and the proof showed that she was rendered unconscious by the blow, and the evidence of the prosecution showed that the blow was given by a rock, and that she was cut on the scalp with a knife, and the court instructed the jury that they could convict the defendant of the offense charged, viz., an assault with intent to murder, or of the lesser offense of an assault with a deadly weapon, the failure of the court to instruct the jury that they might also convict him of a simple assault, is not error in the absence of a request by the defendant for such instruction.

Van Fleet, J. Defendant was charged with assault with intent to murder, and was convicted of an assault with a deadly weapon. He appeals from the judgment and from an order denying him a new trial.

1. The person upon whom the assault was committed was one Clara, an Indian woman, who was at the time living with defendant as his wife. It appeared by the evidence of the prosecution that the parties were encamped near the town of Clover dale; Clara and one Lena Pete, another Indian woman, started from camp on their horses to go to the town; defendant objected to Clara’s going, and, upon her insisting, he dragged her from her horse, struck her on the head with a rock, knocking her down and rendering her insensible, and cut her on the scalp with a knife. Defendant desired to show in his defense that the occasion or provocation of the assault was that he had been informed that his wife was running with other men for immoral and illicit purposes, and that he supposed she was leaving the camp for some such purpose when he stopped her. The court very properly refused to admit such evidence. It was wholly immaterial, since it would not, if true, have justified the assault.

Defendant contends that, “if he had. knowledge of acts of infidelity upon the part of his wife, recently communicated to him, and the further information that she was then about to go away in company with the witness Lena, for the purpose of assignation, that she intended to meet, for the purposes of illicit intercourse, other men, and that such knowledge of her intentions formed the grounds of defendant’s objections to her going, then such evidence was proper to go to the jury to show the animus with which the assault was made, and would have had a tendency to eliminate from the case the malicious and premeditated intent, which the law presumes to flow from the commission of an unlawful act, even though it had not gone to the extent of justifying his interference”; in other words, that it was proper for the purpose of showing an absence of mal[686]ice and premeditated design, if not a defense to the assault. But the defendant did not offer to show either that he had knowledge that his wife was in fact leaving the camp at the time for any such purpose, or that he had been so informed, but simply that he had been informed (he did not offer to show when) that she had been guilty of such conduct before, and, in effect, that he did not wish her to have the opportunity to do so again. While “ the sight of adultery committed by his wife” may be, as suggested by Mr. Bice (3 Bice’s Evidence, sec. 475), provocation to the husband, which will justify that “ heat of passion” which is sufficient to reduce murder to manslaughter, the knowledge of such fact must be based upon something more tangible than mere surmise, and the knowledge must be so recent as to preclude the idea of cooling time or premeditation. It was not claimed or pretended that defendant could show that he was acting under the influence of passion aroused by any recent information of his wife’s infidelity. Plis own testimony showed that he had been aware for some eighteen months that she “ was running with every Tom, Dick, and Harry” for such purposes, and yet had continued to live with her.

People v. Arnold

AI Brief

Synopsis

More from California Supreme Court

Related research

AI Brief