People v. Shaw

SCHAUER, J. In an information filed by the District Attorney of San Bernardino County, defendant was charged with the murder of Pecóla Shaw. The defendant entered pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity; he subsequently withdrew the latter plea. A jury found him guilty of murder of the first degree and made no recommendation as to penalty. Upon such verdict the defendant was sentenced to death. This is an automatic appeal from the judgment as provided by subdivision (b) of section 1239 of the Penal Code. No brief has been filed and no appearance made on behalf of defendant herein. It has therefore been necessary for us independently to examine the record of the proceedings. From such examination it appears that the judgment must be affirmed.

From the testimony the following facts appear: In 1941 the defendant left San Bernardino, where he and his wife Pecóla had resided, and went to Oakland. Although the defendant provided a home for her in Oakland, his wife would not leave San Bernardino, where she resided in a rooming house owned or maintained by the witness Garland Hardage, known in his local community as King George. She stayed at the Hardage house intermittently over a period of about two years, receiving money regularly from the defendant and visiting him occasionally in Oakland. In May, 1943, the defendant returned to San Bernardino and moved her from Hardage’s house. About a week before June 4, 1943, the date when she was killed, Mrs. Shaw left the defendant and went back to the Hardage house. The defendant testified that about five days before the killing, after an unsatisfactory conversation with his wife and Hardage, “A voice spoke to me and said to be sure and kill her.” The next day he saw her on the street intoxicated and supported by two Negro soldiers, and he decided then that he “would rather she be dead than in the condition she was living.”

About midnight on June 3, Shaw broke into the Hardage [710]residence. Hardage, wakened by the noise, got his shotgun and fired one shot downward through the door into the hall. He heard the intruder leave the house, and he and Pecóla went “to call the law.” As they returned, they saw the defendant across the street. Shaw waited near by until the police who answered the call and Hardage left the house to look for him. He then broke into the house again, with a pocket knife open in his pocket. Pecóla picked up the shotgun, the defendant stabbed her once, and she dropped it. He continued to cut her as she, struggling and “hollering,” went out the door, across the porch, and fell in the yard. She was stabbed more than fifty times.