Criscione

Appellant Arthur Criscione was charged by information with the murder of Dorothy Quintanar, and pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. A jury trial was held on the guilt phase, and the jury found him guilty of second degree murder. The sanity phase was then conducted, and appellant was found by the jury to have been legally sane at the time of the murder. He was sentenced to state prison for 15 years to life, and now appeals.

It is undisputed that appellant killed his girlfriend, Dorothy Quintanar, on the night of February 27, 1979. At about midnight he arrived at the home of his son, Ricky, age 21, and told him he had killed Dorothy. The two men then drove to the home of appellant’s ex-wife (Ricky’s mother), but she refused to see him. They then stopped at the police station, where defendant asked to speak to certain officers he was acquainted with, but none of them were available. Next, they drove by Mario’s, a bar where appellant worked as a bouncer, then stopped at appellant’s apartment so that he might see Dorothy “for the last time.” Appellant returned to the car with a photograph of himself and Dorothy, then broke into sobs. Finally the pair drove…

NEWSOM, Acting P.J.

Appellant Arthur Criscione was charged by information with the murder of Dorothy Quintanar, and pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. A jury trial was held on the guilt phase, and the jury found him guilty of second degree murder. The sanity phase was then conducted, and appellant was found by the jury to have been legally sane at the time of the murder. He was sentenced to state prison for 15 years to life, and now appeals.

It is undisputed that appellant killed his girlfriend, Dorothy Quintanar, on the night of February 27, 1979. At about midnight he arrived at the home of his son, Ricky, age 21, and told him he had killed Dorothy. The two men then drove to the home of appellant's ex-wife (Ricky's mother), but she refused to see him. They then stopped at the police station, where defendant asked to speak to certain officers he was acquainted with, but none of them were available. Next, they drove by Mario's, a bar where appellant worked as a bouncer, then stopped at appellant's apartment so that he might see Dorothy "for the last time." Appellant returned to the car with a photograph of himself and Dorothy, then broke into sobs.…

I concur:

Demanding serious consideration is the defense contention of appeal to ethnic prejudice in the prosecutor’s argument during the sanity trial.

The traditional test of prejudicial error in applying the harmless error rule on appeal is whether it is “reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the defendant would have occurred had the district attorney refrained from the comment attacked by the defendant.” (People v. Bolton (1979) 23 Cal.3d 208, 214 [ 152 Cal.Rptr. 141 , 589 P.2d 396 ], citing People v. Beivelman (1968) 70 Cal.2d 60, 75 [ 73 Cal.Rptr. 521 , 447 P.2d 913 ].)

A second test of prejudicial error is referred to in Bolton, supra, as one involving federal constitutional error. Under this test, as enunciated by Justice Hugo L. Black in Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [ 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711 , 87 S.Ct. 824 , 24 A.L.R.3d 1065 ], “... before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The prosecutor’s allusion to Italians and his unsupported statement that “women are not given equal treatment” in his argument ignite the flames of ethnic…