People v. Gilmore

CHIPMAN, C. Defendant was convicted of the crime of burglary in the first degree and was sentenced to four years ’ imprisonment at San Quentin. He appeals from the judgment of conviction and from the order denying motion for a new trial.

1. It is claimed by defendant that the verdict is not supported by the evidence, because (1) it was inadequate to convict; and (2) the evidence introduced showed the defendant incapable of committing the crime. The contention is that the evidence showed that defendant, by reason of his intoxicated condition, was incapable of forming a guilty intent, and that there was not a single circumstance corroborative of his confession. Section 22 of the Penal Code is as follows: “No act committed by a person while in a state of voluntary intoxication is less criminal by reason of his having been in such condition. But whenever the actual existence of any particular purpose, motive or intent is a necessary element to constitute any particular species or degree of crime, the jury may take into consideration the fact that the accused was intoxicated at the time, in determining the purpose, motive or intent with which he committed the act.” The evidence tended to show that defendant was in full possession of his faculties when he made his uncontradicted confession. In it he told where some of the stolen property could be found, and it was found there. He furnished a key to the barn in which the property was found, and remarked (which is not denied), when handing it to the officer, “It may be of use to you,” and it was found useful. His confession was therefore in some substantial degree corroborated by circumstances and facts. While the evidence tended to show that defendant was “crazy drunk” during Monday, and talked in an incoherent and wild sort of way, even claiming that he was “Dunham,” the hunted murderer, and while it appeared that when drunk he was in the habit of talking in an irresponsible and reckless manner, it also appeared that when sober “he was a square, straight man,” and that, in fact, when he made the confession “he talked as rational as any man.” The jury might well conclude that if he was so drunk as to be incapable of a criminal intent when he committed the act, he could not have remembered such details the next morning as he gave of the robbery; and so might the jury refuse to attribute to mere coincidence the fact that his story told at 11 o’clock the next [59]morning turned out to contain circumstances which no person in a condition of maudlin drunkenness or irresponsibility would have been at all likely to remember. We cannot say that the jury were not warranted in holding the defendant responsible for the part he took in the robbery.