People v. Chambers

• Decision Date: 03 December 1964
• Docket Number: Cr. 3559
• Citation: 231 Cal.App.2d 23,41 Cal.Rptr. 551
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. George CHAMBERS, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 551

41 Cal.Rptr. 551

231 Cal.App.2d 23

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. George CHAMBERS, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 3559.

District Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Dec. 3, 1964.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 24, 1964.

Hearing Denied Jan. 27, 1965.

Morris M. Grupp, San Francisco, for appellant.

Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., by Doris H. Maier, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Danial Kremer, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.

FRIEDMAN, Justice.

Defendant George Chambers and one Sarah Spitler were jointly indicted on charges of assaulting Hugh Lawrence by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury on May 2, 1963, in violation of Penal Code section 245. Sarah Spitler was separately indicted for three separate assaults upon Hugh Lawrence occurring on April 18, May 16 and May 27, 1963. Both defendants were represented by the same attorney. By stipulation of the prosecutor and defense counsel, the two actions were consolidated for trial. The jury found Sarah Spitler guilty of the four assaults charged against her and Chambers of the one charged against him. Following a judgment imposing a state prison sentence, Chambers appealed. Mrs. Spitler has not appealed.

At the time of the alleged offenses, Chambers was the owner of a state-licensed rest home for aged and mentally ill patients. He had purchased the establishment in 1962 from Mrs. Spitler, who had previously operated it for some years. Mrs. Spitler had extensive experience in the care of mental patients, and when Chambers purchased the home he employed her to stay on at the establishment as supervising nurse. The institution accommodated about 12 patients.

Hugh Lawrence, the victim, was a patient in the rest home. The testimony directly addressed to the single offense charged against Chambers occupies only three pages of the reporter's transcript; all this testimony was given by Hope Delgado, a nursing assistant. The substance of Mrs. Delgado's testimony was as follows: On the morning of May 2, 1963, she and Mrs. Spitler were feeding Hugh Lawrence, who was 75 years old and in an emaciated condition, weighing 110 pounds. Lawrence refused to take food and Mrs. Spitler slapped him. Later that morning the two women were bathing Lawrence. The patient was lying in bed with restraints on his ankles and hands. He was a quiet patient. He raised his knees and held them together. Mrs. Spitler asked him to straighten out, but he refused. She then called to Chambers, who was outside the room, saying: 'Come on, George, come and help me with this son-of-a-bitch'n bastard.' Chambers came in immediately and hit Lawrence four hard blows in the stomach with his closed fist. Chambers then left, saying to the patient: 'Better mind this woman because she knows her business.' At the time the blows were struck, Mrs. Spitler was on one side of the bed, the witness on the other. The witness offered no explanation why she or Mrs. Spitler did not simply pull his knees apart and bathe him, rather than call upon Chambers for assistance. The assault produced no bruises or marks on Lawrence. According to this testimony, the slap administered by Mrs. Spitler and the punches delivered by Chambers on May 2, 1963, were separate incidents, not a jointly-committed assault.

Without eliciting objection, Mrs. Delgado further testified that on two other occasions she saw Chambers strike Hugh Lawrence in the stomach with his fist; that during the first week of April 1963, while Chambers was sleeping on a sun porch, he was awakened by a patient named Snyder; that Chambers was much annoyed and struck Snyder six times in the face, giving him a bloody nose.

Both defendants took the witness stand. Both denied Mrs. Delgado's testimony of the May 2, 1963 incident and testified that it could not have happened because both were absent from the home on a shopping expedition to buy supplies and to pick up a patient in Sacramento. They introduced receipts from a grocery store, a gas station and an auto parts establishment to verify their testimony. Chambers denied the other incidents described by Mrs. Delgado. Mrs. Spitler testified that while Snyder was in fact assaulted, the person who had been awakened and had struck Snyder was another patient, one Charles Worth.

The rest of the evidence introduced during the three-day trial was directed against Mrs. Spitler alone. There was no evidence of joint or conspiratorial action. The prosecution produced against Mrs. Spitler testimony involving numerous other alleged assaults against patients. These other offenses included the slapping of a patient; striking a patient in the abdomen with a closed fist; beating one woman who ran away; slapping another patient three times; pouring must on a woman patient, knocking her down, dragging her to the bathroom, putting her in a tub, pouring water on her face, forcing her to drink the water until she was bloated, then leaving her on the bathroom floor and walking out; cutting a patient's mouth by use of a spoon while the patient was being fed, then compelling the patient to swallow the blood along with food forced into her mouth; bashing a patient's head against the wall of the bathroom so hard that a dent was made in the wall and a bump raised on the patient's head; kicking a patient, causing her to fall. There was also testimony that Mrs. Spitler on one occasion had pushed an elderly woman into her room with such force that she fell against a bed and then to the floor; that she punched a 70-year-old woman in the stomach as she sat on the toilet; that she hit a woman in the mouth with a closed fist so hard that blood poured from her mouth. There was no testimony and no claim that Chambers had been connected with any of these instances of abuse committed by Mrs. Spitler. Testimony relative to such prior incidents involving Mrs. Spitler represented more than half of the total testimony offered at the trial, and the incidents covered six or sever years. This evidence was offered with little or no objection from defense counsel.

On appeal defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction and that admission of evidence regarding prior offenses was erroneous and prejudicial. There are other defense contentions which, for reasons which will be apparent, require no comment.

Mrs. Delgado's testimony supplied adequate evidence to support the verdict. Mrs. Delgado not only testified that Chambers hit the patient 'hard' with his closed fist, but in the presence of the jury she demonstrated the manner and to some extent the force of the blows struck. There was also in evidence a photograph of the patient, showing his approximate condition at the time of the assault and displaying an aged, emaciated and probably weak person who might easily suffer great bodily injury from the force of the blows. (People v. McCaffery, 118 Cal.App.2d 611, 616, 258 P.2d 557.) Although there was no evidence that the blows produced visible results, the gravamen of the offense is the likelihood that great bodily injury will result from the force applied, not that injury actually occurred. (People v. Pullins, 95 Cal.App.2d 902, 904, 214 P.2d 436; People v. Schmidt, 66 Cal.App.2d 253, 256, 152 P.2d 1021.)

In reviewing this conviction, we find ourselves in an unusual situation, characterized by a paucity of error technically available for appellate review, but emphatically demanding defendant's retrial under better circumstances. Our examination of the record convinces us that defendant was tried and convicted under conditions which deprived him of a fair trial and denied him due process of law.

The adjudicatory process was profoundly influenced by an unusual combination of commonplace elements, in part quite permissible, in part erroneous but not assignable as error in the absence of objection in the trial court. These elements consisted of: (1) the stipulated consolidation of defendant's trial with the trial of separate and unrelated offenses charged against Mrs. Spitler; (2) admission without objection or admonition of voluminous evidence of unrelated acts of brutality by Mrs. Spitler, admissible only because she was on trial for offenses unrelated to that charged against Chambers; (3) the disgusting, inflammatory character of this evidence, which fastened Chambers with moral responsibility (but not criminal responsibility) for the operation of an establishment in which elderly, helpless patients were cruelly treated; (4) admission without objection of inadmissible testimony of unconnected assaults by Chambers; (5) the comparative thinness of directly incriminating evidence in relation to the massive quantum of prejudice-arousing evidence of brutality in the rest home owned by Chambers; (6) the technical correctness and practical inadequacy of an instruction directing the jury to disregard evidence adduced against one defendant alone; (7) and finally, accentuation of the impression of moral partnership by an astounding line of prosecution questions suggesting to the jurors that Chambers and Mrs. Spitler probably shared a single bed.

The events were triggered by an order consolidating the trial of all charges. There is no evidence that the prosecution planned a devious strategic trap, but the results were no less drastic. Unaware of the prosecution's far-reaching evidentiary plans, defense counsel consented to consolidation and did not move for separate trials. The consolidated trial was heavily weighted with evidence of Mrs. Spitler's brutality, offered and received without objection under misconceptions of law apparently shared by the trial court, the prosecutor and defense counsel. On appeal, defendant is now severly limited by waivers and failures to object. According to the decisions, his failure to demand a separate trial waives any right to object to consolidation. (People v. Stadnick, 207 Cal.App.2d 767, 774, 25 Cal.Rptr. 30; People v. Smith,...