People v. Chavez

• Decision Date: 10 August 1951
• Docket Number: Cr. 5197
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: PEOPLE v. CHAVEZ.

Page 632

234 P.2d 632

37 Cal.2d 656

PEOPLE v. CHAVEZ.

Cr. 5197.

Supreme Court of California, in Bank.

Aug. 10, 1951.

Ralph W. Rutledge and Richard E. Patton, Colusa, for appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Atty. Gen., Doris H. Maier and Wallace B. Colthurst, Deputy Attys. Gen. and Daniel E. Weyand, Dist. Atty., Colusa, for respondent.

EDMONDS, Justice.

Felix Chavez has been convicted of the murder of Constance (Connie) Navarro and sentenced to death. His appeal from the judgment and from the order denying a new trial presents only the question as to whether the homicide was a murder of the first degree.

The record shows testimony which may be summarized as follows:

Connie owned a bar and cafe in Colusa, known as the Michoacan, where she employed Gloria Uribe. Chavez, a Mexican citizen, came to Colusa from a neighboring ranch around 6 p. m. He called at the Michoacan to see Connie, whom he had known for some time. Not finding her, he then visited numerous bars and intermittently returned to the Michoacan looking for Connie. When he came back about 3:30 a. m., Connie, Gloria, and Gloria's friend Shorty were preparing to leave.

Chavez asked Connie to drive him to the ranch where he worked. She refused to do so. Connie, Gloria and Shorty then closed the bar and proceeded to the house where Connie and Gloria roomed.

This house, which was about a block and a half away, had a double entrance door which opened into the front room. There was a window on each side of the door. The remainder of the one-floor building was divided into smaller rooms, with a hall extending through the middle of the building.

On the rear of the building there was one door, and a window. One room was occupied by Connie as a bedroom and another by Gloria. A yard in the rear of the house could be entered from the alley by a gate.

Gloria, Shorty and Connie approached the house through the alley. Connie entered the rear door of the house; Gloria and Shorty followed her. The lights were on in the yard and a rear room of the house. Gloria turned on the light in her room after she locked the back door.

Connie went to her room. Gloria and Shorty entered Gloria's room. Gloria remained about five or ten minutes and then left to get a glass of water. She did not see anyone else in the house at that time.

When she returned to her room Shorty, who was drunk, was asleep on her bed. Shortly thereafter, she heard footsteps in the hall and someone turned off a light. Gloria thought she heard Connie gasp. She called out to Connie, but received no answer.

She still heard voices and then a noise like the bedsprings moving. She then started to Connie's room to see who was there. When she came into the hall, she saw that the closet lights were on as well as those in a rear room.

The door to Connie's room was wide open. Connie was lying in bed on her back, clad in a half slip and brassiere. Chavez was on top of Connie, facing her and holding Connie's hands and wrists. He had a knee on each side of Connie. He was wearing all of his clothes with the exception of his shoes.

Gloria asked Chavez what he was doing there and how he had come in, as she had locked the door. At first he did not answer and then said, 'I am not doing nothing to her'. He added that he had come in through the window. Connie said, 'Take him off me', 'He has a knife in his hand'. Gloria grabbed Chavez by the shoulder. The blade of the knife was open and she struggled with him for possession of it.

Connie, meanwhile, jumped from the bed and put on her shoes. She grabbed the knife and cut herself. She told Chavez and he said he did not intend to do it. However, neither of the women could secure the knife and Chavez refused to give it to them. He then pushed Gloria to the wall in the hall, closed the knife and put it in his pocket.

Connie started to walk into the next room where her clothes were. Chavez was behind her and Gloria was standing by the door. When Connie started to put on her skirt, Chavez grabbed her by the shoulder and said something that Gloria could not hear. Connie replied, 'Let me go. Why don't you go? You've done enough.'

Chavez did not reply but stood there. Connie pushed him aside and, as he grabbed her by the shoulders, she said, 'Let me go'. She had her skirt around her neck at this time. Going to the window in the front room, she looked out, turned and pulled on her skirt.

Chavez put his hand in his right trouserpocket, took out his knife, opened it and stabbed Connie in the left side near the abdomen. When he first struck her she said, 'Please don't kill me, Felix'. As Gloria ran from the room she heard Connie repeat the statement.

Gloria ran to her room and found Shorty asleep. The light in the yard was out and the door locked. She ran out of the alley to the sheriff's office and reported that a man was trying to kill Connie. When she returned with an officer, they came through the back door and went directly to the front room, where they found Connie lying on the floor in front of the double doors to the house. Her dress was partly down around her arms and her skirt was pulled up. On the floor next to the body was a wallet belonging to Chavez.

A physician arrived while Connie's body was comparatively warm. He testified that she had been recently assaulted and was dead. An autopsy showed multiple stab wounds involving the lower extremities, the upper extremities, the back, part of the face, and the chest wall. Death resulted from massive hemorrhage caused by a knife wound which reached the heart.

Three days later Chavez was apprehended by Stockton police. He was then carrying a spring knife with a corrugated black bone handle and a single blade which was operated by pressing a button. The knife blade was two and one-half to three inches long. His clothes were not bloodstained. When the officers attempted to book Chavez at the jail he fought with them.

By other evidence, statements said to have been made by Chavez were presented to the jury. The record includes testimony that while the sheriff of Colusa county and two deputies took Chavez to Colusa in an automobile, John Chavez and the appellant had a conversation in Spanish. No promises of immunity or threats of any kind were made to the appellant and he admitted that he killed Connie with the knife which the Stockton police took from him. In relating the events of the evening of the killing, he stated he was looking for Connie. She had promised him that some day she would go to his camp but she did not do so. He was angry and went to her house, intending to kill anybody that he found with Connie and then kill himself.

The appellant then told John Chavez that he hid in the alley and saw Gloria and a man go into Connie's house. He walked up to the back door, and found that it was locked. He then unscrewed the light bulb from the socket by the door, tore the screen from a window, which had a pane of glass missing, and entered the house through the window. After he was in the house, he took off his shoes and walked along the hall slowly with his open knife in his hand, intending to kill anybody he found with Connie, and 'to get' Connie.

He found Connie's room and saw her lying in bed. She was asleep. She awakened and said, 'Felix, you scare me'. He pushed Connie back on the bed and had intercourse with her, still holding the open knife in his hand.

When Gloria walked in and asked him what he was doing there, the two women wrestled with the appellant for possession of the knife, but did not succeed in getting it. He put it in his pocket and followed Connie into the next room. Connie asked him how he got into the house. He told her that he had entered through a window. She walked to the front room and looked through the window to see if the screen was torn. She said, 'Don't be a fool you fool. Get out. Stay out of here.' Felix became infuriated, opened his knife and stabbed her. She fell and 'he got right on top of her again, and finished doing the job that he started'.

In a conversation with Mary Allread, a police matron who also acted as a Mexican interpreter, the appellant was asked certain questions. No promises of immunity or threats were made to him. In answer to these questions, Chavez stated that he entered Connie's house through the window with the intention of killing her, because she wanted to leave him for other men and he was the laughing stock of Colusa. He had a knife in his hand when he entered her room and still had it in his hand when he had intercourse with her. After the difference between rape and voluntary intercourse was explained to him, Chavez said that he raped her.

At the trial, the appellant took the stand in his own defense. He told the jury that every eight or twelve days, for some months before the homicide, Connie had visited him at the various ranches where he worked. However, prior to the night he killed her, he had not seen her for approximately three or four weeks except at her bar.

On the various occasions when she visited him, which were usually at night she would stay for a couple of hours and they would go to bed. He asked Connie to leave her husband and join him, but she refused as her husband was ill. He gave her about $375 because he cared for her.

Continuing his testimony, Chavez said that when he approached Connie's house, he saw Gloria closing the door, and heard someone's voice. He found the back door locked, cut the screen, and entered through the window. He stated that he entered secretly because he did not want Gloria to know of his presence, believing her to be ignorant of his affair with Connie. He removed his shoes and left them as he entered the hall.

Chavez told the jury that he found Connie asleep in bed, clad in a slip. When she awakened, he was on the floor, kneeling beside her with the knife in his hand, the blade being open because it was stuck. He told her not to be afraid, got up from the floor, and sat on her bed. He kissed her...