State v. Sanchez

• Decision Date: 10 February 1971
• Docket Number: No. 10405,10405
• Citation: 483 P.2d 173,94 Idaho 125
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Margil SANCHEZ, Jr., alias Mike Sanchez, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 173

483 P.2d 173

94 Idaho 125

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Margil SANCHEZ, Jr., alias Mike Sanchez, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 10405.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

Feb. 10, 1971.

Rehearing Denied April 1, 1971.

R. Don Bistline and Beverly Bistline, Pocatello, for defendant-appellant.

Robert M. Robson, Atty. Gen., Walter H. Bithell, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boise, and Thomas E. Moss, Pros. Atty., Blackfoot, for plaintiff-respondent.

McFADDEN, Justice.

Margil Sanchez, Jr., was charged with the crime of voluntary manslaughter of his stepson, eighteen month old Shane Furney, and on trial was found guilty of the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter. From the judgment of conviction, he appeals. The defendant and his former wife, DeAnna Lyn Furney, were married in January, 1967, while the defendant was still in the armed forces. Sanchez remained in the states for three months and was shipped overseas, later returning to Blackfoot. He was finally discharged from the service in August, 1967. At the time of the marriage his wife had three small children, issue of a previous marriage and Shane Furney, a son born out of wedlock. Sometime following the death of Shane, on January 9, 1968, which death the defendant was found to have caused, his wife obtained a divorce from Sanchez.

The record discloses that at about 8:05 a. m. on January 9, 1968, the defendant and his wife brought Shane Furney to the emergency room of the Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot. Mr. Staley, a technologist at the hospital who was also the county coroner, met the couple with the baby at the emergency room, and Mr. Staley attempted to give the child artificial respiration. A physician at the hospital, Dr. Hales, came in, checked the child and pronounced the boy dead. Consent was given for performing an autopsy, and later that day an autopsy was performed by Dr. Hazel McGaffey, a pathologist.

Dr. McGaffey testified as to the results of the autopsy she performed and stated that the child's death was caused by internal injury, particularly to the pancreas, with secondary hemorrhage into the abdominal cavity. She stated that the hemorrhage was from the crushing of the head of the pancreas, and that from her examination the injury must have been inflicted not less than thirty minutes and not more than three hours prior to the time of death.

At the time the child was brought to the hospital his extremities were cold, although where his body was covered the body was still warm. Rigor mortis had not yet commenced. The time of death was not clear.

Mr. Staley, Dr. Hales and Dr. McGaffey all testified to the presence of bruises on the boy's head and face and on his body and legs. Dr. McGaffey stated she saw no evidence of external bleeding.

The state in its presentation of the case relied entirely upon circumstantial evidence raising the inference that the defendant inflicted the injury to the child resulting in his death. Mrs. Furney, the child's mother, was called as a witness for the state, and she testified that the night before the child died she had returned home from a meeting about 11:30 p. m., that she bathed the child, who had been suffering from the flu and also recovering from chicken pox. She clothed her son with a pair of pajamas, a pair of blue plastic pants, and a diaper made out of a dish towel. She testified that at the time of the bath she observed only one bruise on his body, a deep bruise on his face resulting from a hard slap by the defendant three days earlier. She stated that she would have noticed if there had been other bruises on Shane's body at this time. After the bady was cleaned and dressed, she took him upstairs and made a bed for him on the floor next to the bed occupied by her and the defendant so that she could watch hin through the night. The child was restless and would not stay in his bed and she later took the child downstairs and put him into his own bed.

Mrs. Furney testified that when she returned to bed she fell asleep, woke up once when the defendant arose and went downstairs, but fell asleep again. The next thing she remembers is that the defendant came running up the stairs, excitedly screaming, 'Oh, no; oh, no!' He told her something was wrong with the baby, and she immediately went downstairs, found the baby in the crib badly bruised, lying on his back. She called the hospital, got a neighbor to stay with the other children and she and the defendant took the child to the hospital.

Mrs. Furney could not accurately state how long a time had elapsed after she heard the defendant arise from the bed and before he returned screaming. The coroner Mr. Staley, stated that the baby had on a nightshirt and a diaper. There is nothing in the record to show what happened to the other clothing which the mother had placed on the baby after she had bathed him. However, the record is not clear as to whether the baby was fully clothed when brought to the hospital.

There was considerable evidence introduced over objection concerning bruises and bruise marks on the other children, and there was testimony concerning an incident which happened on September 7, 1967, when the deceased child was badly bruised around the head and to the extent that there was evidence of a slight skull fracture to the child. Defendant stated that this injury occurred when he was carrying the child up the stairs and he stumbled, the child hitting the hand rail along the staircase. There was also an incident testified to concerning the defendant giving a strong alcoholic beverage to Shane on Thanksgiving day of 1967 and that the child was badly affected by it.

On January 8, 1968, the morning preceding the child's death, the defendant arose and was preparing breakfast for the children. Sanchez had the flu that day and did not go to work. He testified that he heard a cry and upon looking found Shane lying on his back on a landing on the stairs leading to the basement where he had apparently fallen. Sanchez stated that he went down to help the child and in the process of going to him, stumbled, with his knee hitting the child in the abdomen. Sanchez testified that the baby was having difficulty breathing, that he took the child to the basement and splashed some water on him and he started to breathe normally.

There was also testimony that sometime in the afternoon of January 8, 1968, the defendant changed the diaper on Shane, and in so doing he found Shane's hands and feet were cold. The clothes dryer was still warm and the defendant testified that he made a 'bed out of the diapers in the dryer and I laid him in there for a second and then I took him out.' However, the door of the dryer somehow closed and it started to run; the defendant opened the door and took the boy out. He saw no blood in the dryer at that time.

During the course of the trial the state, over the objection of the defendant, introduced into evidence the door to the dryer. The bottom part of the door had certain stains on it that were testified to by Mr. Staley as being human blood. Mrs. Furney testified that she had noticed blood on the dryer a couple of days following the death of her son, but the police officer and coroner were not notified of this fact until sometime in February, 1968.

This overview has been set forth to give a background for consideration in the proper context of the assignments of error submitted by the defendant.

The first assignment of error is directed to the testimony of Mr. Staley, the coroner, who was permitted to testify concerning a conversation he had with the defendant at the hospital following the determination that the child was dead. Staley testified that he had asked that an autopsy be perormed and permission was given, but before that Staley had asked the defendant what had happened and the defendant told him about the incident when the child had fallen down the stairs. The defendant contends this was error inasmuch as he had not first been advised of his constitutional rights. This assignment is without merit as there was no objection ever interposed to the admission of this testimony at the trial. State v. Taylor, 76 Idaho 358, 283 P.2d 582 (1955), and State v. Boyatt, 59 Idaho 771, 87 P.2d 992 (1939), which cases hold that absent an objection to admission of the testimony this court will not consider the issue on appeal. Moreover, the conversation to which the assignment of error was directed was not a custodial interrogation. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), upon which the defendant relies, requires that the defendant be advised of his constitutional rights only before an in-custody interrogation takes place. At the time of the conversation Sanchez was not in custody and Miranda v. Arizona, supra, is not applicable. See State v. White, 3 N.C.App. 31, 164 S.E.2d 36 (1968), which is similar to the case at bar, and United States v. Montos, 421 F.2d 215 (5th Cir. 1970). See also State v. Carpenter, 92 Idaho 12, 435 P.2d 789 (1967).

Error is assigned to the admission of testimony of a number of witnesses who testified as to prior acts of discipline by the defendant against not only Shane, the deceased boy, but also against the other children in the household. It is contended that this testimony of other acts by the defendant was not connected with the crime with which he was charged. The state, however, urges that whereas the general rule is that past acts of bad conduct or criminal actions cannot normally be admitted into a criminal case, there are certain exceptions to this rule. One of the exceptions to the general rule as urged by the state is that prior acts or conduct by a defendant are admissible to establish motive, intent or absence of mistake or accident. State v. Eubanks, 86 Idaho 32, 37, 383 P.2d 342 (1963).

This court in previous cases had held that evidence of other criminal acts may be introduced: to establish motive, State v. Newman, 70 Idaho 184, 214...