People v. Burgle

Citations

• 123 Cal. 303
• 55 P. 998
• 1899 Cal. LEXIS 1067

Syllabus

<p>Criminal Law—Assault with Intent to Murder—Malice—Instructions.—Upon the trial oi a charge of assault with intent to commit murder, it seems that section 188 of the Penal Code, describing both express and implied malice, should not be given as an instruction, and the failure to give it when not asked for by the defendant is not prejudicial to him. An instruction that the word “malice,” as involved in the crime charged, “imports” a wish to vex, annoy, or injure another person, or an intent to do a wrongful act, is not erroneous, because not describing implied malice, which is not the equivalent of the actual intent essential to the crime of assault with intent to commit murder.</p> <p>Id.—Insanity—Instructions as to Intent to Murder—Harmless Omission of Defense.—Instructions correctly stating the law upon the subject of intent to commit murder, as applied to a sane man, are not prejudicially erroneous, because omitting to include the defense of insanity, where it appears that the court elsewhere in its charge repeatedly instructed the jury that if the defendant was insane at the time of the assault he was incapable of forming the intent necessary to constitute the crime.</p> <p>Id.— Time of Insanity — Inapt Language in Instruction.—Inapt language in an oral instruction as to the present insanity of the defendant is not ground for reversal, where it appears that the language could not be fairly construed as meaning otherwise than that the appearance of the defendant at the trial might be, considered as a circumstance in determining his sanity at the time of the assault, and the jury were elsewhere instructed that the question of insanity related to his insanity at the time of the assault.</p> <p>Id.—Financial Oppression of Defendant—Question of Sanity—Instruction Construed.—Testimony having been admitted to show that oppression of the defendant by the prosecuting witness in certain financial transactions had tended to drive him to insanity, an instruction to the ju