People v. Roderick

5 P.2d 463, 118 Cal. App. 457, 1931 Cal. App. LEXIS 200
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedNovember 21, 1931
DocketDocket No. 1606.
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 5 P.2d 463 (People v. Roderick) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Roderick, 5 P.2d 463, 118 Cal. App. 457, 1931 Cal. App. LEXIS 200 (Cal. Ct. App. 1931).

Opinion

SPENCE, J.

The defendants were jointly charged with having murdered one Frank Roderick. They were tried together before one jury and separate verdicts were returned finding each defendant guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree and fixing the punishment of each at imprisonment for life. Motions for new trials were made and denied .and judgments were pronounced. Appeals have been taken by said defendants from the judgments and the orders denying their motions for new trial.

Frank Roderick, deceased, lived upon a ranch in San Mateo County with his wife, his children and a hired man. He was last seen alive by others on May 14, 1930. Appellant Minnie Roderick, his wife, and appellant Woodring, the hired man, both admitted seeing him on the morning of May 15, 1930. On that date he disappeared and his body was not recovered until June 27, 1930, when it was found with a bullet wound through the skull buried about twenty-six feet under the ground in an abandoned well on the premises.

Prior to the trial each of the appellants denied any participation in the killing of the deceased and after arrest each made statements showing or tending to show that the deceased had met his death at the hands of the other on the morning of May 15, 1930. The prosecution presented a vast *461 amount of circumstantial evidence and proceeded upon the theory that the appellants had conspired together to till the deceased, to dispose of his body and to conceal the fact that the crime had been' committed.

Appellant Woodring contends that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict against him and the appellant Roderick conteüds that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict against her. In our opinion both contentions are without merit. We will not attempt to set forth in detail all of the evidence upon which the prosecution relied. A summary of some of that evidence covers twenty-eight pages of respondent’s brief, but we do not believe that such lengthy summary is required here.

Appellant Woodring had been living upon the Roderick ranch for some time prior to May 15, 1930, and continued to live there up to the time of his arrest on June 22, 1930. He was thirty-seven years of age and the appellant Roderick was thirty-two years of age. Although both appellants denied any intimacy between them, the evidence showed that the attitude of appellant Roderick toward appellant Wood-ring was not the attitude ordinarily assumed toward a hired man. They were frequently seen together at various places prior to the death of the deceased, sometimes in company with the deceased and sometimes not. They frequently kissed each other, which fact appellants attempt to minimize because on some of these occasions the deceased was present and for the further reason that appellant Roderick had kissed other men. The witness Mrs. Anderson, who was employed by appellant Roderick after the death of the deceased and lived at the ranch, testified that appellants were always together and that she had seen appellant Woodring kissing appellant Roderick about three or four times a week.

The story of the family life at the Roderick ranch prior to the death of the deceased is a sordid tale to relate. We shall not present it in detail. There was abundant evidence in addition to the testimony of appellants showing that each of the appellants had frequently quarreled with the deceased. The evidence showed that the parties had freely indulged in the use of alcoholic liquors, had freely used profane language and that threats and drunken scuffles were not infrequent. In his reply brief, appellant Woodring speaks of these “parties, drunken scuffles and outbursts of *462 profanity involving all parties on the Roderick ranch and neighboring localities” as “ commonplace ' and perfectly natural events”. In her reply brief, appellant Roderick speaks of her threats against her husband as mere idle threats “so commonly used as to be properly classified as slang”. These consisted of various threats uttered during quarrels such as “You go on, you God damn Portuguese or I will shoot you.” “I will kill you,” “I will cut your heart out” and “Get out of here you Portuguese s-of a b- or I will shoot your head off.” In April, 1930', deceased and appellant Woodring had a fight in the home of the witness Hildebrand in which they broke down a door and scuffled on the floor until separated by the witness. The same witness was present on May 11, 1930, which was four days before the death of the deceased, when deceased and appellant Woodring again had a fight on the Roderick ranch in which foul words were used and blows were exchanged. Appellant Woodring testified that this altercation followed the failure of himself and appellant Roderick to wait, on that day at a place called Carlson’s Camp until the deceased had arrived; that when deceased returned to the Roderick ranch he quarreled with appellants, saying that he had been told that appellant Woodring had induced appellant Roderick to leave and not wait for the deceased at the camp; that the appellant Woodring then said: “Whoever said that told a damn lie”; that deceased thought appellant Wood-ring had called him “a damn liar” and the altercation ensued. Whatever attempt may be made by appellants to belittle the effect of evidence relating to the prior relations of the parties, the jury was warranted in attaching to such evidence a far greater significance than appellants would have accorded to it. Suffice it to say that the jury could very properly conclude from the evidence that the relationship of appellants toward each other had been more than friendly and that each had borne a feeling of hatred and malice toward the deceased.

On the morning of May 15, 1930, the Roderick children had gone to school and there were but three people on the ranch, the deceased and the two appellants. The only direct testimony purporting to show what occurred on the ranch that morning was the testimony of the two appellants. Their stories were irreconcilable and it is apparent that the *463 jury could and did properly attach little if any credit to either. Omitting for the present the testimony of both appellants relating to what happened on the morning that the deceased was killed, we will proceed to consider some further circumstances brought out by the prosecution. At about noon of that day appellants together visited a resort known as Peek-a-Boo Inn located at La Honda about six miles distant from the Roderick ranch. At that place they stated that “they had been driving cattle all morning and they were tired”. It may be noted that at no time thereafter did either appellant testify or make any statement to this effect, but their statements and testimony showed that they were occupied with doing things other than driving cattle. Appellant Woodring in the presence of appellant Roderick further stated that Prank Roderick had “disappeared with some red-headed woman in a Cadillac car”. About 2 o’clock of the same day appellants visited the store of Archie Woodhams at La Honda and appellant Woodring in the presence of appellant Roderick “said that Prank Roderick was on a wild tear up at the ranch and that they came down to get away from him a little while or something similar to that”. On the following day, May 16th, appellants went to Palo Alto and in a conversation with Mrs.

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Bluebook (online)
5 P.2d 463, 118 Cal. App. 457, 1931 Cal. App. LEXIS 200, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-roderick-calctapp-1931.