People v. Hall

• Decision Date: 25 November 1964
• Docket Number: Cr. 7963
• Citation: 41 Cal.Rptr. 284,396 P.2d 700,62 Cal.2d 104
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 396 P.2d 700 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Monroe Smith HALL, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 284

41 Cal.Rptr. 284

62 Cal.2d 104, 396 P.2d 700

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Monroe Smith HALL, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 7963.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

Nov. 25, 1964.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 23, 1964.

Don Edgar Burris and E. V. Cavanagh, Los Angeles, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Gordon Ringer, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

TRAYNOR, Chief Justice.

Defendant was charged by information with murder. ¹ (Pen.Code, § 187.) He waived a jury trial, and the court found him guilty of murder in the second degree. (Pen.Code, § 189.) He appeals from the judgment ² on the ground that the evidence is insufficient to support it.

Just before noon on Saturday, May 19, 1962, a resident of a one-story hotel in Los Angeles noticed blood at various points along the hallway. He pushed open the door of the kitchen used by all the residents of the hotel and, without entering, saw Ethel Mae Johnson lying in blood on the floor. He went to the porch and asked a passing female neighbor to call the police. When officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office arrived, they found the decedent nude with a curtain rod and cloth loosely wrapped around her neck and a bloody rag across her midsection. She had been stabbed 49 times.

There was a considerable amount of blood in the kitchen, two spots in an adjacent room that the decedent shared with her lover, a trail of blood leading diagonally across the hall, and blood smears elsewhere on the floor and walls of the hallway. The investigating officers noticed two soleprints and two heelprints made by a man's shoes in the blood near the body. They also found the kitchen window broken through, the window screen pushed out, some broken glass, and a bloody handprint on the wall just outside the window. A bloodstained man's glove lay on the kitchen floor. Its mate was found across the hall in a room that the decedent sometimes occupied.

Two residents of the hotel told the officers that while in bed earlier that morning they heard the decedent's voice and the sounds of a 'commotion.' Her words suggested to them that she was in imminent danger of being 'cut' by a person she seemed to be addressing as 'Monroe.' Interviews with others closely associated with the decedent tended to indicate that defendant, Monroe Hall, was the only Monroe that the decedent knew. He had lived at the hotel and was an old friend of the man with whom she lived. Defendant had a criminal record that included a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. (Pen.Code, § 245.) Although no one had seen him near the premises for at least two weeks, including the day of the killing, the investigating officers teletyped their information to the Los Angeles Police Department and asked for his arrest. ³

[396 P.2d 702] At 9:30 that evening, officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, without a warrant (Pen.Code, § 836), accosted defendant on the street. He cooperated fully. The arresting officers handcuffed him and took him to the 77th Street Police Station for booking. Defendant's testimony that after the booking he requested and was denied permission to call a lawyer was uncontradicted. ⁴ The police then transferred him to the Firestone Sheriff's Station where Sergeants Collins and Thornton, who had investigated the crime, took charge.

The sergeants noticed a brown splotch on the bottom of defendant's right shoe. Both shoes were removed and given to chemical experts who performed benzidine tests for the presence of blood. Parts of three spots removed from the area where the instep meets the heel reacted positively to the benzidine. Only one spot was identifiable as human blood, but there was not enough of it to permit the blood type to be ascertained. Although one chemist testified that the spots appeared to be fresh, no test was made to determine their age. Detailed visual examinations and further benzidine tests made directly on the bottoms of the shoes failed to disclose any other traces of blood.

Sergeant Collins also noted that the instep areas of the soles of both shoes looked unusually scrubbed and whitened. (At the trial, the judge examined the shoes closely and noticed, in addition to their scrubbed appearance, a blackening on the whitened areas.) Although Sergeant Collins mentioned his observations to the chemists, they made no tests to determine what caused the discoloration. The chemists observed glass fragments in the soles of the shoes, but specific gravity tests showed no similarity between these fragments and glass found at the scene of the crime. In addition to these tests, the police took photographs of two scratches on defendant's face.

At 2:30 a. m., without telling defendant that he had a right to remain silent, Sergeants Collins and Thornton began to question him. At some point during the interrogation defendant was informed, apparently for the first time, ⁵ that he was being charged with the murder. He related in some detail his activities on the Saturday of the killing. Asked about the condition of his shoes, he explained their clean appearance by referring to a walk on damp grass, and a shine and cleaning earlier that evening. He could only speculate that shaving cuts might have caused the spots of blood. At the trial Sergeant Collins testified that defendant also said that he had washed his shoes with Clorox. At 3:07 a. m., when questioning continued in the presence of a reporter, however, defendant denied having scrubbed his shoes. In his transcribed statement he admitted knowing the decedent but denied stabbing her. After the interrogation the police kept defendant in custody and did not take him before a magistrate until the following Wednesday. ⁶

At the trial, the two men who overheard the sounds of the crime said that they had gone to bed only a few hours earlier that morning after a long night of gambling and drinking. They made no effort to investigate any of these sounds when they heard them. Shortly thereafter, on leaving the hotel, they noticed bloodstains in the hallway and heard noises in the bathroom, but again made no effort to see what might have happened. Instead, they went out for more liquor. Only when they heard sirens did they return to the premises to speak with the police.

One of these witnesses testified to hearing the decedent utter six statements over a period of about fifteen minutes. The first four seemed to come from near the front door. 'Wait a minute. I am going with you.' 'I am not going to tell the police anything about you.' 'Did he send you down here to do this to me?' 'Here he come now for real.' The other two seemed to come from the kitchen. 'Monroe, don't kill me.' 'Don't cut my baby.' This witness admitted that he could not be sure of the order in which the statements were made.

The other witness, awakened by he former, heard fewer statements. His testimony suggests that he heard the last two utterances. His report, however, differs both as to their probable locale and their content. According to this witness, the decedent was in the hallway and said: 'Monroe, don't cut me. I will tell him I fell out of the bed.' 'Monroe, don't kill my baby.'

Both witnesses were certain that the decedent said 'my baby' and not 'me, baby,' although there is no evidence that the decedent had a baby and there is evidence that she was not pregnant. They also agree that they heard only the decedent's voice, that she spoke in a conversational tone, and that the sounds of a struggle were audible. Neither witness was sure whether the decedent uttered 'Monroe' at the beginning or at the end of the statements in which she used the name. The testimony of each was inconsistent in particulars with statements each had made to the police on the day of the killing.

Other witnesses testified that, although the decedent had expressed some disapproval of defendant on one or two occasions, she was not afraid of him, and that he had not threatened her. No one knew if defendant had any romantic interest in her.

Defendant took the stand and told substantially the same story of his activities on the Saturday in question that he had given to the interrogating officers. Other witnesses corroborated defendant's testimony in many details.

At the close of the trial the prosecution revealed that a police search of defendant's apartment turned up no damaging evidence.

We agree with defendant's contention that the evidence is insufficient to support the judgment. In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence an appellate court 'must assume in favor of the verdict the existence of every fact that the (trier of fact) could reasonably deduce from the evidence and then determine whether or not a reasonable (trier of fact) could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.' (People v. Hizenga, 34 Cal.2d 669, 676, 213 P.2d 710, 713; accord People v. Robillard, 55 Cal.2d 88, 93, 10 Cal.Rptr. 167, 358 P.2d 295, 83 A.L.R.2d 1086.) 'Implicit in our duty to determine the legal sufficiency of evidence to sustain a verdict is our obligation, in a proper case, to appraise the sufficiency and effect of admitted or otherwise indubitably established facts as precluding or overcoming, as a matter of law, inconsistent inferences sought to be derived from weak and inconclusive sources.' (People v. Holt, 25 Cal.2d 59, 70, 153 P.2d 21, 27; see Jaffe, Judicial Review Question of Fact, 69 Harv.L.Rev. 1020, 1026-31.)

The evidence against defendant, standing alone, lacks substantial probative value. The decedent's use of the name 'Monroe' is inconclusive. Although witnesses testified that defendant was the only Monroe that the decedent knew, she had been convicted of narcotics addiction, prostitution, and soliciting, and it was therefore likely that she had a wide and private circle of acquaintances. Moreover, as noted...