People v. Crawford

• Citation: 205 Cal.App.2d Supp. 858,23 Cal.Rptr. 566
• Court: California Superior Court
• Decision Date: 26 June 1962
• Parties: 205 Cal.App.2d Supp. 858 PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Kennard CRAWFORD, Sr., Defendant and Appellant. C. A. 4895. Appellate Department, Superior Court, Los Angeles County, California

Page 566

23 Cal.Rptr. 566

205 Cal.App.2d Supp. 858

PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Kennard CRAWFORD, Sr., Defendant and Appellant.

C. A. 4895.

Appellate Department, Superior Court, Los Angeles County, California.

June 26, 1962.

Burton Marks, Beverly Hills, for appellant.

Roger Arnebergh, City Atty., Philip E. Grey, Asst. City Atty., William E. Doran, Deputy City Atty., for respondent.

BISHOP, Judge.

The trial court, sitting without a jury, found the defendant guilty of having failed to provide for his two minor children, Kennard and Mark; denied the defendant's motion for a new trial and his motion in arrest of judgment; suspended proceedings without the imposition of sentence; and placed him on probation. The defendant has appealed both from the order denying his motion for a new trial and from the order granting him probation. As no appeal is authorized from an order denying a new trial in such a case as this (section 1466, Penal Code) we are dismissing the appeal as to that order. We have the order under review and in mind, however, as we consider, and affirm, the order granting probation.

As to some things there is no dispute. The two boys, Kennard and Mark, one aged two, the other under a year, are the children of an unwed mother. The defendant has furnished a modicum of life's necessities for Kennard, but none for Mark. The defendant admits that Kennard is his son, but denies that the event ever took place that would make Mark his child.

There ideas are woven like colored threads through defendant's arguments. The first is that the trial court should not have credited the testimony of the boys' mother showing that the defendant, and he only, could be the boys' father, but should have believed his testimony that he had not known Mark's mother since a time before Kennard's birth. This line of argument on appeal--that the trier of facts should have reached a different conclusion on the contradictory testimony--is, unfortunately, not rare, even though it has been held futile in a host of cases (see list of cases under k1159, ofCriminal Law, West's California Digest).

Defendant's contention that he should have been acquitted because the evidence, properly weighed, did not establish his guilt as to Mark, therefore, fails to move us to reverse the order granting probation, both because there was ample evidence that Mark was his child and because, if it were insufficient, there still remained the accusation, to which he at the beginning entered a plea of 'guilty', and which was established beyond a doubt, that he had failed to support Kennard. If the premise of the connection were tenable, a modification of the probation order, not its reversal, would be the most that the defendant could expect. As the premise is untenable, even that relief is not warranted.

The second idea that threads its way through defendant's arguments is that he did not know whether or not he was Mark's father, and until it was judicially determined that he was, he was under no obligations to furnish support. He states: 'To hold that a defendant can only deny paternity at his peril and at the risk of criminal prosecution smacks of judicial extortion.' Perhaps the law should provide that the duty to care for one's child does not arise until an action in the nature of one for declaratory relief had been prosecuted to judgment, but no statute so provides (see People v. Stanley, 1917, 33 Cal.App. 624, 626-7, 166 P. 596; People v. Hamil, 1925, 73 Cal.App. 649, 652, 283 P. 1075), and no principle of law known to us so declares. Instead, we read in In re Clarke, 1957, 149 Cal.App.2d 802, 807, 309 P.2d 142, 146, these words quoted from Nash v. United States, 1912, 229 U.S. 373, 377, 33 S.Ct. 780, 57 L.Ed. 1232, 1235: "[T]he law is full of instances where a man's fate depends on his estimating rightly, that is, as the jury subsequently estmates it, some matter of degree. If his judgment is wrong, not only may he incur a fine or a short imprisonment, as here; he may incur the penalty of death.' Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 377, 33 S.Ct. 780, 781, 57 L.Ed. 1232.' Under the facts as they were told by the mother, in this case, the defendant must have known that Mark was possibly, even probably, his child. He was not free to fail to furnish aid until he was sure about it. Furthermore, the trial judge doubtless remembered the response made by the defendant when he was advised by the mother of Kennard that another child was on its way, and that it was the defendant's child. The response was not: 'Why you know that it cannot be, for since Kennard's birth I have not been near you.' The reply, instead, as the defendant testified, was: 'Is it?' No person was named or otherwise identified as the possible father of Mark. The trial court might well have questioned the good faith of defendant's denial or even of his doubt, that he was Mark's father.

Another contention of the...