Taylor

The defendant was charged in the information with having killed and murdered one Bedrosian on the twenty-eighth day of June, 1905. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, recommending the defendant to the mercy of the court, and he was sentenced to a term of six years in the state prison. This appeal is from the judgment and an order denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial.

The homicide was the result of a dispute as to water rights from an irrigation ditch. The deceased and the defendant each had a right to take certain water from the same ditch, but the trouble arose as to the time at which the water should be taken by each. The defendant could not get water below at times when deceased put extra boards in the head-gate and backed the water so that it would flow through a branch ditch onto the land of the deceased, and the deceased could not get the water to his land without putting in the extra boards. The defendant, from his own testimony, appears to have armed himself with a pistol on the morning of the homicide, as he was about to start to the point in the irrigation ditch where the boards had been placed by deceased. He made the declaration that he would have…