People v. Mitchell

SHINN, P. J. By information Norman Mitchell was charged in Count I with a violation of section 273d of the Penal Code in inflicting upon Bertha Mae Mitchell a corporal injury on August 23, 1956, which resulted in a traumatic condition, and in Count II with committing a like offense on October 10, 1956. Mitchell was represented at the trial by a Deputy Public Defender. Trial was to a jury which found him not guilty on Count I but found him guilty on Count II. Defendant’s motion for a new trial was denied. Probation was likewise denied and defendant was sentenced to state prison for the term prescribed by law. He appeals from the judgment and an order denying him a new trial.

The conviction was based upon evidence of the following facts. Defendant and Bertha Mae Mitchell were husband and wife and on October 10, 1956, they were residing in a three-room apartment on West 47th Street in the City of Los Angeles. At approximately 9 p. m. that evening, Officer G. L. Bryan of the Los Angeles Police Department received a call to go to the Mitchell residence. Upon arriving in the vicinity he saw Mrs. Mitchell running down 47th Street; she was dressed only in a torn slip which was covered with blood spots and she was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Defendant was chasing her. The officer stopped Mitchell and interrogated him. The officer testified that defendant told him he suspected his wife of infidelity with a house guest, that he knocked her down and “stomped” on her, tried to kill her, and that he would certainly kill her after he was released from jail. The officer went to the apartment with defendant and observed what appeared to be fresh blood stains on the floor and walls in all three rooms.

The complaining witness was taken to the receiving hospital where she was examined by Dr. Lawrence Owens, who treated her for a broken jaw, contusions around the face and head, and a laceration over one of her eyebrows. Dr. Owens referred Mrs. Mitchell to the county hospital for further treatment; she remained there for two weeks. A photograph of the complaining witness, taken at the receiving hospital, was introduced in evidence; the photograph disclosed the injuries we have already mentioned.

[667]Mrs. Mitchell testified that around 8:30 p. m. on October 10th she was in bed. Her husband had been drinking. He called her into the bathroom, confronted her with a white boy who was a house guest of the Mitchells, and accused her of “being with the kid.” Mrs. Mitchell denied any impropriety. Defendant then seized his wife, struck her on the side of the jaw with his fist, and gave her a bad beating about the face and head. Mrs. Mitchell ran from the apartment and telephoned the police from a nearby liquor store. In the course of cross-examination which anticipated the defense that was forthcoming, she denied having had intercourse with the guest, denied attacking her husband with a screwdriver, denied hitting her head against the bedstead and denied stumbling into a washing machine on her way out of the apartment. She admitted having stabbed Mitchell in the kidneys in December 1955 and pointing a shotgun at him in June 1956, but she testified that those incidents occurred upon occasions when he was beating her.