Lucich

Defendant was charged with the crime of murder. He was tried before a jury which returned a verdict of guilty and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He appeals from the judgment and from the order-denying his motion for a new trial.

There is not, and could not well be, upon the record before us, any claim that the evidence adduced at the trial was insufficient to support the verdict, and it will, therefore, be unnecessary to state the evidence at length.

The deceased, one M. G. Sturtevant, was jointly indicted with a number of others for conspiracy to violate the federal prohibition laws in the operation of a still and in the manufacture of illicit liquor. Pending the trial of these defendants in the federal court at San Francisco the deceased turned state’s evidence and voluntarily testified against his co-defendants. While that trial was pending the deceased and a Mrs. Berri met the appellant in San Francisco and discussed the trial, the deceased’s connection with it as a witness, and the fact that Mrs. Berri was unable to appear as a witness in that case because her husband was one of the defendants on trial, but that she had information valuable to the government…