Haney

Defendant was charged with the murder of Albert Reidinger. He was tried, convicted of murder in the first degree, with the punishment fixed at life imprisonment. This appeal is from said judgment of conviction and the order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.

On the 29th of May, 1919, the defendant approached George Baldwin, and offered to sell him a Ford automobile, which, he said, “was coming up from Los Angeles.” Baldwin desired to purchase such a machine. The defendant and a young man by the name of Red Christiansen spent the rest of the day in the Mission district and downtown section of San Francisco looking for a Ford automobile. At the ferry building they found Reidinger driving the car they wanted. They engaged him to take them to Daly City. When near Coppa’s corner, in that vicinity, the defendant struck Reidinger over the head with a piston from a riveting machine—a short iron bar about three-fourths of an inch thick—fracturing his skull. They then drove to a lonely spot near by and laid the body in the bushes by the roadside, putting one of the cushions of the automobile under the head. Defendant and Christiansen then returned to San Francisco, leaving the…