Reference no: EM133302187

Question: In People v. Wolff, 61 Cal.2d 795 (1964) , the California Supreme Court, on review of a trial court's judgment of murder in the first degree in a matricide, reduced the conviction to the lesser included felony of second-degree murder. On the trial, four psychiatrists called to testify on behalf of the defendant, a 15-year-old boy at the time of the crime, all agreed in their mental diagnosis of the defendant as suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia, a permanent and abiding condition.

The defendant had raised an affirmative defense based on California's M'Naughton Rule, which entitles a defendant to rebut a presumption of legal sanity, by a preponderance of the evidence, by showing that "at the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong." [see footnote 1 on page 9 of the handout above] The jury found the defendant sane, and the state Supreme Court upheld this finding, based on the defendant's voluntary admissions shortly after he came to the police station and reported that he had just killed his mother.

The State Supreme Court found, however, that although there was no question that the defendant had the intent to kill his victim, his mental infirmity presented substantial evidence mitigating against a reasonable inference that he harbored the requisite quantum of personal turpitude and depravity implied by the expression "with premeditation and malice aforethought" as required by the murder statute for conviction on charges of first-degree, as opposed to a lesser legislative grade of murder.

In People v. Anderson, 70 Cal.2d 15 (1968) the California Supreme Court reviewed a first-degree murder conviction and death sentence of a defendant who had killed a ten-year old girl, the daughter of a Mrs. Hammond with whom he had been living for about eight months. This appeal (our reading assignment above) reviewed the trial court's second conviction and death sentence upon retrial after the same California Supreme Court reversed the earlier conviction because it had been predicated upon a jury finding that the murder was committed in the course of the commission of raping the victim, an enumerated felony under the legislatively defined felony murder rule, but evidence that the defendant had, at the time of killing the girl, the specific intent to commit rape, was obtained by police as a result of denying the defendant a requested attorney, and therefore had been erroneously admitted on the trial in violation of the intervening U.S. Supreme Court decision in Escobedo v. Illinois (1964).

In this, our Discussion Forum for Week Seven (Oct 18-24), you are asked to explain whether, in your appraisal of the matter in People v. Anderson , 70 Cal.2d 15 (1968), had the interrogating officers that interviewed the defendant at the police station after his arrest not violated the defendant's right to counsel, but still obtained the incriminating testimony in a manner not offending the defendant's constitutional rights, the defendant's second murder conviction and death sentence might have been upheld.

The record discloses the following colloquy between defendant and the interrogating police officers, prior to the time defendant gave his incriminating admissions: ...]

In preparing your contributing post(s) to this Discussion Forum, YOU MUST APPLY the California Supreme Court's rule distinguishing first-degree from lesser degrees of murder, as announced on page four of our reading assignment, namely, the SECOND appeal before the California Supreme Court, here, again, at the following internal link:

That rule is, in Justice Tobriner's lead opinion, is as follows:

"The type of evidence which this court has found sufficient to sustain a finding of premeditation and deliberation falls into three basic categories: (1) facts about how and what defendant did prior to the actual killing which show that the defendant was engaged in activity directed toward, and explicable as intended to result in, the killing--what may [cite] be characterized as 'planning' activity; (2) facts about the defendant's prior relationship and/or conduct with the victim from which the jury could reasonably infer a 'motive' to kill the victim, which inference of motive, together with facts of type (1) or (3), would in turn support an inference that the killing was the result of 'a pre-existing reflection' and 'careful thought and weighing of considerations' rather than 'mere unconsidered or rash impulse hastily executed' (cite); (3) facts about the nature of the killing from which the jury could infer that the manner of killing was so particular and exacting that the defendant must have intentionally killed according to a 'preconceived design' to take his victim's life in a particular way for a 'reason' which the jury can reasonably infer from facts of type (1) or (2).

"Analysis of the cases will show that this court sustains verdicts of first-degree murder typically when there is evidence of all three types and otherwise requires at least extremely strong evidence of (1) or evidence of (2) in conjunction with either (1) or (3). As will become clear from the following analysis of representative cases, the present case lacks evidence of any of the three types."

BE SURE to study Tobriner's lead opinion, which relies on substantial California Supreme Court precedent, carefully. IN YOUR judgment, HAD the interrogating officers that interviewed the defendant at the police station after his arrest not violated the defendant's right to counsel, but still obtained the incriminating testimony in a manner not offending the defendant's constitutional rights, might the defendant's SECOND murder conviction and death sentence, on retrial, have been upheld, based on the majority opinion's own specification of the rule, quoted in the passage above, distinguishing first-degree from lesser degrees of murder? ON THAT HYPOTHESIS, do you believe there might have been sufficient evidence of "facts about the defendant's prior relationship and/or conduct with the victim from which the jury could reasonably infer a "motive" to kill the victim, which inference of motive, together with facts of type (1) or (3), would in turn support an inference that the killing was the result of 'a pre-existing reflection' and 'careful thought and weighing of considerations' rather than 'mere unconsidered or rash impulse hastily executed'?"