People v. Buckowski, Cr. 5200

• Decision Date: 27 July 1951
• Docket Number: Cr. 5200
• Citation: 37 Cal.2d 629,233 P.2d 912
• Parties: PEOPLE v. BUCKOWSKI.
• Court: California Supreme Court

Page 912

233 P.2d 912

37 Cal.2d 629

PEOPLE v. BUCKOWSKI.

Cr. 5200.

Supreme Court of California, in Bank.

July 27, 1951.

Morris Lavine, Los Angeles, for appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Atty. Gen. and Frank Richards, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.

SHENK, Justice.

Stanley Buckowski and his wife were charged with the murder of Helen J. Edmunds on February 1, 1950. Each pleaded not guilty and waived a jury trial. They were jointly tried. The wife was acquitted but Stanley was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. A motion for a new trial made on all the grounds contained in Penal Code section 1181 was denied. This is an automatic appeal under Penal Code section 1239(b).

Helen J. Edmunds was approximately eighty years of age and lived alone in the City of Los Angeles. On the evening of February 1, 1950, a neighbor heard a sound like a gun shot followed by moaning. The following afternoon neighbors entered Mrs. Edmund's home and found her lifeless body on the bed. The rear screen door had been slashed in one corner; the glass panel of a second door was scratched and broken; telephone wires leading to the house had been cut; a living room desk had been ransacked. The autopsy surgeon testified that death was due to a gunshot wound.

Officers later found several guns in an apartment rented by the Buckowskis. A ballistics expert testified that one of these guns had fired the bullet which killed the deceased. A fingerprint expert testified that a palm print found on broken window glass at the home of the deceased was that of Stanley Buckowski.

The defendant testified that he had acquired the alleged lethal weapon over a month after the slaying while committing a burglary and that he had never been in the home of the deceased until taken there by police investigators. He declared that he had committed burglaries too numerous to mention but that it was never his practice to cut telephone wires, to break windows, or to ransack but a single desk. He testified that he felt that if he had the opportunity he could disprove all the evidence produced, but added that in view of the fact that his wife had told officers that he left her outside while he entered the home of the deceased he could only say that if he had committed the crime he did not remember it.

Prejudicial error is asserted in the denial of the defendant's request for a continuance to secure a private investigator's assistance to establish the particular burglary in which he believed he had acquired the lethal weapon. The prosecution had offered to inform him as to the burglary date if he would otherwise describe the particulars, but he refused to give details. He offers no explanation as to why in the exercise of due diligence he could not have obtained the information prior to the trial. The granting of a continuance normally rests in the discretion of the trial court. People v. Collins, 195 Cal. 325, 233 P. 97. No abuse of discretion appears.

The defendant contends that the evidence is insufficient to justify the verdict. He claims that according to the testimony of the ballistics expert the gun alleged to have been used marked each bullet fired in a different location. The same expert, however, testified that these markings were identical with those found on the fatal bullet and that that bullet had been fired by the gun found in the Buckowskis' apartment. The defendant argues that because photographic enlargements of the bullets compared by the ballistics expert were not introduced the presumption of Code of Civil Procedure section 1963(6) arises to the effect that higher evidence would be adverse where inferior evidence is produced. No more direct evidence of the conclusions of the ballistics expert was necessary than his oral testimony in connection with the bullets themselves.

There is testimony by an expert that palm prints are as reliable as fingerprints. This view is in accord with that expressed in State v. Kuhl, 42 Nev. 185, 175 P. 190, 3 A.L.R. 1964. The defendant calls attention to certain dissimilarities between the palm print found at the scene of the crime and the defendant's palm print. The expert testified that ten points of identity are...