People v. Goldstein

WHITE, J. In an information filed by the district attorney of Los Angeles County defendant was charged with the murder of his wife, Dora Dean Goldstein, on June 18, 1939, to which charge he entered a plea of not guilty. After a trial before the court sitting without a jury, defendant was found guilty of murder of the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Prom the judgment of conviction and from the order denying his motion for a new trial defendant appeals. The sole contention on appeal is that the circumstances surrounding the killing show that the crime was manslaughter or at the most murder of the second degree.

Summarized, the evidence upon which the court based its decision is as follows: The deceased, Mrs. Goldstein, came to the home of a Mrs. Gronoff on June 18, 1939, at about 11 o’clock in the morning, where she stayed all day. Defendant came to the house several times during the day and had conversations with his wife in which he asked her to come home with him, to which requests she replied that she was through with him, that she was waiting for her son to pick up her belongings and that she was leaving him. In the evening defendant returned again to the house, saying to his wife, “Honey, let’s make up and forget it. Let’s go to a show and have dinner,” to which the wife again replied that she was through; and “that was the last time she would ever go with him”. About 8:15 or 8:30 of the same evening, according to the witness Mrs. Gronoff, defendant and his wife left the house together, and ‘ ‘ a very short time ’ ’ after they departed, “about five minutes or something like that”, the witness heard two shots, and coming out on the front porch found deceased sitting on the steps and the defendant gone.

On cross-examination the witness Mrs. Gronoff testified that defendant had said to his wife, “I can’t live without you. Please, come on, let’s go to the show.” That the wife replied in substance that “she was through with him because he would not let her keep company with her men [579]friends”. Defendant was crying and begging and on his knees. That in this conversation he also told her he was some twenty years older than she, and since their marriage they “had gone through every dime they had”.

One witness testified that on June 15, 1939, and on other occasions she had heard the defendant say to his wife, “Honey, if anything you do I don’t like I will shoot you. I hate to waste bullets because they cost money;” that he said he “didn’t care what happened to him; that he would put his arms around her and call her endearing names”. Another witness testified that on several occasions she heard defendant tell his wife that if she ever left him he would kill her; that whenever he said that he always started out the statement by calling her darling or some endearing name; that he would tell her he was very much in love with her and life meant nothing without her. A police officer testified that he found the defendant at an oil station near the scene of the shooting shortly after 8:30 P. M.; that the defendant handed him a revolver and said that he had just shot his wife; that he loved her very dearly and had been arguing with her for a day and a half; that she threatened to leave him and he couldn’t stand to see her go; that he had spent all of his money since their marriage. It further appeared from the evidence that deceased was about 42 years of age and the defendant 60. The defendant took the stand, but testified only as to his age.