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45 Cal. 650

People v. Bumberger

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1873

California Supreme Court · decided 1873-07-01

The defendant was tried upon an indictment for felony. In its charge to the jury the Court used this language: “ Of course there is one thing to be said about this kind of defense [insanity]. It is doubtless true that it has been relied upon in a great many cases, and has been sustained where it should not have been; it has got to be somewhat odious in the minds of the community.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently February 1926

10 state decisions

40187318801890190019101920decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court:

¶1The only points made relate to the charge given by the Court to the jury. Subdivision six of section one thousand and ninety-three of the Penal Code provides that the “ charge must be reduced to writing before it is given, unless by the mutual consent of the parties it is given orally, or unless it is fully taken down by the reporter of the Court at the time it is given.”

¶2It appears from the record that the Court charged the jury orally, “ a written charge being waived.” It also appears that “ counsel for the respective parties having expressly waived a written charge, the Court charged the jury as follows;” and then the charge is given at length in the transcript.

¶3There can be no just pretense that the charge was not given orally by the mutual consent of the parties; and if there could be, we should still necessarily presume from the fact of its appearing in the record, that it was fully taken down by the reporter at the time it was given.

¶4There was no impropriety in the remarks made by the Court to the jury on the subject of insanity. They were a just caution to the jury to be careful that no pretended case of insanity should be allowed to shield a man from the ordinary consequences of his own acts, while at the same time the jury were in effect told that if one has really committed an act which was the result of a diseased or unsound mind, the defense of insanity would be a good one, and he ought to have the full benefit of it.

¶5Judgment affirmed.

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