People v. Griffith

Defendant was charged with the crime of assault with intent to commit murder. The jury returned a verdict finding him guilty of the lesser crime of assault with a deadly weapon. From the judgment which followed upon the entry of this verdict, and from the order denying his motion for a new trial, he appeals.

The assault was committed upon the person of defendant’s wife, and her narrative of the occurrence is as follows: The Griffiths had been living at the Arcadia Hotel in Santa Monica and were about to remove to Los Angeles. Upon September 3d the defendant went from Los Angeles to Santa Monica and proposed to his wife a. walk upon the beach. They took this walk, purchasing some souvenir postal-cards at a curio-store, thence to the plunge-bath, and thence back to the hotel, wdiere the wife resumed the packing of her trunks, as they were to leave the hotel the following day. She had nearly packed her trunk when her husband entered. He took his overcoat from the closet and placed it in the trunk which she was packing, went into another of their apartments, and when next he entered the room brought with him his wife’s prayer-book. His wife noticing it, said: “Never mind about the things in the top bureau. I will pack them later.” Her husband handed her the prayer-book and told her to get down on her knees and swear to certain things he was about to ask her. She was very much alarmed, and she took the book, got down on her knees, and then noticing a revolver in his hand she pleaded with him to put the revolver away. He said, “Close your eyes and do as I command you.” When his wife saw he was determined, she asked him to let her pray, and raised her eyes and prayed. After she had ceased her prayer he asked her three questions. He took a slip of paper out of his pocket and read the questions from the slip, and asked her the first question, if she knew who had been responsible for the death of or who had poisoned Mr. Briswalter. She answered no, that Mr. Briswalter had not been poisoned, but had died from blood-poisoning. She undertook to narrate the circumstances of his sickness, when her husband immediately stopped her, and said, “That is enough.” He then asked, “Have you ever been implicated in trying to poison me?” and she replied: “Why, papa, I have never harmed as much as a hair of your head.” “The third question was, if I had ever been

The defense was alcoholic ihsanity. The defendant was not a witness in his own behalf, but evidence was offered to show, and the line of defense was that he had always been a man of oddities and eccentricities; that for years he had been a heavy drinker, and usually a secret and solitary drinker. This excessive use of liquor so persisted in, acting upon his mind, a trifle eccentric at all times, produced a condition which the physicians for the defense ’described as chronic alcoholic illusional insanity; that he was a man of overweening and inordinate vanity; that he entertained the delusion that his wife had been attempting his death by poison; that he entertained the delusion that his wife had been false to her marital vows; that he entertained the delusion, in connection with the poisoning, that his wife, who was of the Catholic faith, was the chosen instrument of; the church for his destruction.

As to the circumstances attending the shooting of Mrs. Griffith there is little or no substantial controversy, saving upon one matter, the nature of the shooting itself. Here the contention of the defense is, that the defendant, even in his insanity, did not designedly cause the discharge of the pistol; that his wife was making oath, as her husband was demanding, so that there was no occasion to shoot her, that the pistol was a hair-trigger! weapon, and that it was discharged accidentally, either because of the extreme nervousness of the insane man, or because his wife in her terror and

The Griffiths were people of wealth and consequence in the community; special counsel, eminent in the law, were, as is usual in such cases, employed upon either side. The trial was a protracted one. Much expert evidence from physicians was produced upon either side, and many exceptions were reserved by the defense, all of which are here pressed upon us for consideration. We can notice only those which present matters of serious consideration. Some of the others, even if technically errors, could not, from the nature of the case, have injured in the slightest respect the defendant’s rights.

Nor do we consider it necessary to present the facts of the case with any more elaboration and detail than as above given. It is perhaps, however, proper to add that it was not pretended by the defense that there was any foundation in the slightest degree for the charges and insinuations which the defendant brought against his wife; but, to the contrary, it was admitted that she stood wholly blameless in all those matters.

The instructions given and refused by the court upon the subject of insanity are first attacked, and at the outset it is said that the court erred in instructing the jury to the effect that voluntary intoxication is no excuse for crime, but may be considered when an actual existence of a particular motive is necessary to constitute a crime and in determining the degree of crime, and in further instructing the jury that in weighing the evidence offered to show the excessive use of alcohol by the defendant, as bearing upon the question of his responsibility, they should keep in mind the distinction be

Appellant detaches from its context an instruction which the court gave, to the effect that if the jury entertained a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed an assault upon the person of his wife, as charged in the information, but not with an intent to kill her or murder

The court refused to give an instruction at the request of the defendant to the effect that the defendant was by law presumed to be a man of good character, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, and to show error reliance is had upon People v. Gleason, 122 Cal. 370 . In that case, however, an instruction was actually given by the judge to the effect that the people are not permitted to assail the character of a defendant until the defendant has himself put his character in issue by calling witnesses and offering evidence in its support, and unless put in issue by the defendant the people can in no way attack his character. This court’s language in People v. Gleason, 122 Cal. 370 , was directed to that state of facts, and it was held that it constituted an unwarranted reflection upon the defendant in suggesting to the jury that if the prosecution had had an opportunity to do so it might possibly have shown that he was not a man of good character. In the present case no evidence as to character was introduced, and no instruction as to character was given, and, as is said further in People v. Gleason: “Instructions upon abstract rules of law which Lave no application to the evidence in the case, tend to confuse rather than to enlighten the jury, and ought not to be given.” While in People v. Doggett, 62 Cal. 27 , it is said that a defendant’s good reputation as to traits involved in the charge, if proved, should be weighed as any other fact established. The error of the court in the Gleason case arose from the giving of an instruction not addressed to the evidence and extremely prejudicial to the defendant. It may not be said that "in this case, in the absence of any evidence, the court’s refusal to give the desired instruction was error, to the prejudice of defendant, for the

Error is urged also in the asking of certain hypothetical questions by the prosecution, it being insisted that these questions contain elements not found in the evidence itself. It would unduly and uselessly prolong this to set forth these matters in detail, and it must suffice to say that an examination of the evidence in the case does not disclose that there was any unfairness or any hardship to appellant or to his case from the questions which were permitted. Nor do we perceive that the court erred in limiting the cross-examination of certain of the experts.

As to the alleged error in admitting the evidence of Drs. Bryant and Davisson, in that it called for a disclosure of privileged communications, not only was no such point or objection made at the trial, but the rule as to privileged communications between a party and his physician does not

We have thus considered all the points which seem to call for special mention. Upon a review of the whole case we do not perceive that the defendant had other than a fair and impartial trial. The acts which he committed were brutal and unpardonable, excepting upon the theory of insanity. The jury seems to have concluded that he was legally sane and responsible for his acts, but seems further to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to whether or not he actually and deliberately did the shooting, or whether his crime ceased with the assault, and the actual shooting was the result of misadventure. It gave him the benefit of the doubt in this instance,"and so convicted him of a lesser crime, and for the

McFarland, J., and Lorigan, J., concurred.

Hearing in Bank denied.