People v. Ong Git

The defendant, Ong Git, and three other Chinamen were jointly charged with the murder of one Lee Lung Kai. Upon a separate trial of the defendant Ong Git he was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and his punishment was fixed at life imprisonment. This appeal is from the judgment and an order denying a new trial.

The motion for a new trial was grounded, among other things, upon alleged newly discovered evidence which, as shown by affidavits and the testimony of witnesses offered and received in support of the motion, tended to contradict and impeach the evidence of one McKeever, a witness for the people; who testified upon the trial that he had heard the shots which it was claimed resulted in the death of the deceased, and that shortly thereafter he had seen the defendant with a pistol in his hand running away from the scene of the homicide. In short, the newly discovered evidence consisted, as stated in the opening brief of counsel for the defendant, “in part of contradictions of statements by McKeever as to what he had done, and in part of direct and affirmative evidence that the witness McKeever was in another place in Salinas at the time when, according to his…