Medaini

Early on the evening of July 7, 1918, at St. Helena, Napa County, the defendant shot and killed his wife, Mary Medaini. The homicide appears to have been the result of jealousy or a suspicion on the part of the defendant that the deceased had been unduly intimate with an employee of the defendant. The defendant was arrested and in due time charged with and tried in the superior court of Napa County for the crime of murder. He interposed at the trial the defense of insanity. The jury found him guilty of murder of the second degree, and he was thereupon sentenced by the court to imprisonment in the state prison at Folsom. He appeals from the judgment and the order denying his motion for a new trial.

The transcript on appeal was filed in this court on the thirty-first day of January, 1919. The case was placed on the calendar of the late (April, 1919) term of this court for hearing, and the attorney for the defendant and the attorney-general regularly and duly notified of the day upon which it would be called for argument. No brief has ever been filed on behalf of the* defendant in support of the appeals, nor was there any appearance by or for him when the cause was, in its regular…