Holloway

The defendant in this ease was charged, in an information filed in the superior court of Santa Clara County, with the crime of murder. Upon his trial he was convicted of murder in the first degree, and the penalty therefor, life imprisonment, was fixed by the jury.

Briefly stated the essential and practically undisputed facts of the case pertaining to the points presented in support of the appeal are these: The deceased was the wife of the defendant. The homicide occurred at the home of the defendant in Palo Alto. An autopsy upon the body of the deceased showed that she came to her death as the result of hemorrhage of the brain caused by gunshot wounds. Two bullets were found in the body of the deceased, “one of which passed through the right forearm . . . and entered to the right of the temple.” This bullet fractured the skull of the deceased. The second bullet lodged in the brain of the deceased, and its point of entrance was found to be directly in the back of the head. The bullet wound in the right forearm of the deceased was powder-marked. There was no eye-witness to the killing of the deceased. The defendant, however, upon his trial admitted the killing, and attempted to…