State v. Trujillo.

Citation27 N.M. 594,203 P. 846
Decision Date23 December 1921
Docket NumberNo. 2547.,2547.
PartiesSTATEv.TRUJILLO.
CourtSupreme Court of New Mexico

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Syllabus by the Court.

No mere words, however opprobrious or indecent, are deemed sufficient to arouse ungovernable passion, so as to reduce a homicide from murder to manslaughter.

The rule that the court should limit the issues to the degrees of crime shown by the evidence is the same in cases where the evidence is wholly circumstantial as where the evidence is direct. In the former class of cases, however, where the circumstances shown are susceptible of two or more interpretations, it is for the jury, and not the court, to draw the proper inferences from the evidence.

It is reversible error to submit, in a murder case, the issue of voluntary manslaughter to the jury where no such issue is involved in the evidence.

Appeal from District Court, Colfax County; Leib, Judge.

Sotero Trujillo was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded, with instructions.

It is reversible error to submit, in a murder case, the issue of voluntary manslaughter to the jury where no such issue is involved in the evidence.

L. S. Wilson, of Raton, for appellant.

H. S. Bowman, Atty. Gen., and A. M. Edwards, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

PARKER, J.

Appellant was indicted for murder of one Luke Casamoff, was tried and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to a term of from nine to ten years in the state penitentiary. The case is here on appeal from that judgment.

The facts immediately surrounding the homicide are only circumstantially shown, there being no eyewitness to the tragedy. The deceased was found in the afternoon of the 21st of December, 1919, in his room at the side of a cot or bed with his head crushed in on the left side by a blow received from a heavy instrument. An ax covered with blood was found right near the body. There was no evidence of any struggle at the time of the homicide. Deceased's clothes were undone--that is, unbuttoned--but were not removed, and his shoes were unlaced. He had been sitting upon the edge of the bed when he received the blow, the bedclothes having been turned down preparatory to his going to bed. Several days later the appellant was arrested, and he was wearing a coat which was taken by the sheriff to a chemist and criminologist in Denver, who testified that the coat had several blood stains upon it, and that the blood stains were of human blood. Several witnesses testified to seeing the deceased and the defendant in company of each other during the night preceding the morning when the homicide must have been committed.

One witness, Ivan Ramyak, was the most satisfactory witness as to the conduct and association of the deceased and appellant on the night previous to the homicide. He testified that at about a quarter after 12 of that night he went to the house of the deceased. He there found the deceased and the appellant. He says that they were quarreling, and that the deceased told the appellant that he (the appellant) had a wife and children and that he would not work; that, after taunting the appellant with the fact that he would not work to support his family, and stating that people of deceased's nationality worked, the deceased took out of his pocket a little bag of money, and showed it to the defendant, showing a considerable sum. He says that the deceased told him (the witness) that he would give him a drink if the defendant had not been there, and that the witness then told the deceased to come over to the witness' house and that he would give him a drink, and at the same time he told appellant to come along also. The three went to the house of the witness and remained there from a little after 1 o'clock in the morning to a quarter to 5 of the same morning, during which time they were drinking wine. The witness says that the deceased and the appellant went away from his house together, and that as soon as they left the house he shut the door and did not know where they went.

The defense of the appellant was that of alibi. He testified himself, and he was supported by his wife and his mother, that he went to his own house, and went to bed at about 1 o'clock, and did not leave the house thereafter until late the following morning.

At the close of the trial, the court, over the objection of appellant, submitted to the jury the question of the guilt of the appellant of voluntary manslaughter, and the principal contention here is that in so doing the court committed error, upon the theory that there was no evidence in the case justifying a submission of that issue to the jury.

[1] 1. The Attorney General relies, in support of the judgment, upon two propositions: (1) That there is evidence of adequate cause for heat of passion; and (2) that, as there was no direct evidence of the immediate circumstances surrounding the homicide, it was not only proper, but necessary, to submit all the degrees of unlawful homicide to the jury.

Our manslaughter statute is as follows:

“Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is of two kinds: 1st. Voluntary: Upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion. 2nd. Involuntary: In the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony; or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.” Section 1460, Code 1915.

As before seen, appellant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and consequently he must have killed deceased without malice and upon a sudden quarrel, or in the heat of passion, or the verdict was not supported by the evidence. There is absolutely no evidence in the record of a sudden quarrel. There is evidence of a quarrel some three and a half hours before deceased reached his room, where he was killed, but during that time deceased and appellant were together, and there was no quarrel between them. There is no evidence that the quarrel was ever renewed between them. The evidence likewise fails to show adequate cause for heat of passion. The most that appears is that deceased taunted appellant as being lazy and refusing to work to support his family. It is well established by the great weight of authority that no mere words, however opprobrious or indecent, are deemed sufficient to arouse ungovernable passion, so as to reduce a homicide from murder to manslaughter. 13 R. C. L. “Homicide,” § 99; State v. Buffington, 71 Kan. 804, 81 Pac. 465, 4 L. R. A. (N. S.) 154. See, also, State v. Dickens, 23 N. M. 26, 29, 165 Pac. 850. In this connection we call attention to a minority doctrine recognized in England and a few states to the effect that it is the existence or nonexistence of sufficient passion, properly aroused, which is determinative; the means whereby the passion was excited being immaterial, so long as they were of a nature naturally calculated to excite such passion in the ordinary mind. Such rule is recognized by statute in Texas. See note to State v. Buffington, supra, where the cases are collected. See also State v. Grugin, 147 Mo. 39, 47 S. W. 1058, 42 L. R. A. 774, 71 Am. St. Rep. 553.

In the case at bar, however, no claim is made that heat of passion was aroused in the mind of appellant, and therefore we do not deem the question as to the better doctrine to be properly raised here.

[2] 2. The Attorney General relies upon two territorial cases, and argues from them that, where the evidence as to the immediate circumstances of the homicide is entirely circumstantial, it is not only proper, but required, to submit all degrees of unlawful homicide. He cites Aguilar v. Territory, 8 N. M. 496, 46 Pac. 342, and Territory v. Padilla, 8 N. M. 510, 46 Pac. 346.

In the Aguilar Case the defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree. He appealed, and assigned as error the refusal of the court to submit to the jury second and third degree murder. The facts in that case were that the appellant was travelling from the town of Cochiti to his home in San Miguel county, and met the deceased and another on the road and traveled with them that day, camped with them that night, traveled with them until late in the afternoon of the following day, when they all stopped for dinner. After dinner they separated, the appellant going in the direction of his home. Four days later the bodies of the two fellow travelers of appellant were found dead in their wagons some miles from the place where the appellant left them. They had been beaten to death with an ax. At the time of the occurrence and the trial the statute...

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32 cases
  • State v. Morrison
    • United States
    • Idaho Supreme Court
    • May 19, 1932
    ... ... cannot properly be convicted of manslaughter, the judgment of ... conviction should be reversed and the cause remanded with ... directions that it be dismissed. ( State v. Pruett, ... 27 N.M. 576, 21 A. L. R. 579, 203 P. 840; State v. Trujillo, ... 27 N.M. 594, 203 P. 846.) ... The ... term corpus delicti means the body of the offense or crime, ... not, as the judge instructed the jury, "that a crime has ... been committed, and the defendant on trial committed ... it." (14A C. J. 1425; State v. Sullivan, 34 ... Idaho ... ...
  • State v. Ramirez
    • United States
    • Court of Appeals of New Mexico
    • October 19, 1976
    ...to give instructions on manslaughter. It is error to submit the issue of manslaughter where no such issue is involved. State v. Trujillo, 27 N.M. 594, 203 P. 846 (1921). See also, State v. Smith, supra; State v. Nevares, 36 N.M. 41, 7 P.2d 933 (1932); State v. Gutierrez, Judgment and senten......
  • People v. Buck
    • United States
    • Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US
    • December 8, 1992
    ...but see People v. Newman, 360 Ill. 226, 195 N.E. 645 (1935), Pugh v. State, 114 Ga. 16, 39 S.E. 875 (1901), and State v. Trujillo, 27 N.M. 594, 203 P. 846 (1921), which reversed convictions of voluntary manslaughter where, despite sufficient evidence to support a conviction of murder, one o......
  • State v. Nevares.
    • United States
    • New Mexico Supreme Court
    • January 27, 1932
    ...And words alone, however scurrilous or insulting, will not furnish the adequate provocation required for this purpose. State v. Trujillo, 27 N. M. 594, 203 P. 846. The test of whether the provocation was adequate must be determined by considering whether it would have created the passion of......
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