People v. Samson

YORK, P. J. As a result of a jury trial, defendant was found guilty of the crime of assault with a deadly weapon, as charged in the information filed herein. She appeals from the judgment of conviction, asserting that the evidence adduced at said trial is insufficient to support such judgment.

The assault occurred under the following circumstances : Mrs. Lou Nell Fullerton, the person assaulted, in company with her husband and a Mr. Smith drove up to the curb of a Los Angeles city street about nine o’clock in the evening of September 12, 1945, and alighted from an automobile. Mrs. Fullerton testified that “We were just stepping out of the car, my husband and Mr. Smith, they just stepped out of the car, and we were starting to walk down the street when the marine came up. . . . We were sightseeing and were looking for something to eat, some shrimps . . . while we were waiting for Mr. Smith to come from locking the car, this marine stepped up and he put his arm around my waist and he said, ‘I will take this one.’ . . . And the boy, my brother-in-law,— this friend, Mr. Smith, stepped up and he identified himself as the Shore Patrol, and the fellow first knocked my husband —he knocked my husband down and he first called him a 4-F man, and he was just discharged from the Navy a week before, and he said, ‘Hell, I don’t want any trouble with you.’ And when he knocked my husband down, all the other marines came up, and I was standing by the car and Miss Samson came up from behind me and got my arms and turned them behind me. ... I said, ‘What do you mean?’, and she said, ‘Just be still and you will find out.’ And she knocked me down on the sidewalk, and when she did, I finally got up and she knocked me down again, and I got up - and she got me up against the wall and cut me with a bottle. . . . She broke the bottle and cut me in the arm. . . . Like this (indicating) [523]. . . and she said, ‘I will cut your eyes out,’ and when she did, I threw up my arm and she cut my arm, here. ... It was a beer bottle.” Said witness testified that the muscle of her arm was cut necessitating the taking of twenty-eight stitches in her arm; that she had received medical attention “three times and maybe I will have to have another operation”; and was still under the care of a doctor. The husband of the prosecuting witness, Mr. Grady Fullerton, testified; “One boy came up and grabbed my wife around the waist . . . and I was asking him to leave my wife alone, and then they came up and one boy hit me. . . . She (appellant) grabbed her by the arm and threw her down on the sidewalk. . . . She came from behind one time and grabbed her by the arm. ... I was fighting with the marines. . . . Part of the time I was up. ... I heard my wife holler ‘Leave me alone,’ and I looked up and saw she (appellant) had hold of her (prosecuting witness) . . . my wife finally got loose, and she (appellant) broke this bottle on the sidewalk or on the curb.” That he saw the bottle in appellant’s hand; that he was then fighting with the marines, who still had hold of him; that he was trying to get loose and get to his wife; that he did not see everything that was going on, but he saw enough to know that appellant cut his wife, that appellant had the bottle in her hand, and he saw appellant beating his wife’s head on the sidewalk; that he saw no one else strike his wife.