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People v. Wiley10/4/1976
liberation." We rejected the argument, stating: "But this was not the meaning of the Legislature. The acts of homicide by poison, etc., carry with them conclusive evidence of premeditation, and the jury would have no option but to find the prisoner guilty in the first degree, upon proof of the crime; but it does
not follow that the same result should not flow when other proof of deliberation than that afforded by these circumstances existed. For the statute is express, that ' all other kind of deliberate, willful and premeditated murder is murder in the first degree.' To fall within this class, the crime must be premeditated, willful, and deliberate."
We adhered to this interpretation in People v. Belencia (1863) 21 Cal. 544, in which we held that evidence of intoxication was admissible as tending to show the "mental status" of a murder defendant if "the means employed in the killing were not such as to give character to the offense," (21 Cal. at p. 545) since intoxication did go to whether the act was deliberate and premeditated.
Then, in People v. Sanchez (1864) 24 Cal. 17, we offered the interpretation of section 21 that was the law when section 189 was later adopted, and which was incorporated into the Code Commissioners' notes explaining section 189 when the Penal Code of 1872 was presented to the Legislature for adoption: "In dividing murder into two degrees, the Legislature intended to assign to the first, as deserving of greater punishment, all murders of a cruel and aggravated character; and to the second all other kinds of murder which are murder at common law; and to establish a test by which the degree of every case of murder may be readily ascertained. That test may be thus stated: Is the killing wilful, (that is to say, intentional,) deliberate, and premeditated? If it is, the case falls within the first, and if not, within the second degree. There are certain kinds of murder which carry with them conclusive evidence of premeditation. These the Legislature has enumerated in the statute, and has taken upon itself the responsibility of saying that they shall be deemed and held to be murder of the first degree. These cases are of two classes. First -- Where the killing is perpetrated by means of poison, etc. Here the means used is held to be conclusive evidence of premeditation." (24 Cal. at p. 29. Italics in original.)
The Code Commissioners' Note advised as to section 189: "This section is founded upon Sec. 21 of the Crimes and Punishment Act, as amended by the Act of 1856. -- Stats. 1856, p. 219. The Commission made no material change in the language. . . . After all that had been written upon this topic, it remained for the Supreme Court of this State to be the first to draw the distinction between the two degrees of murder, in language so clear, explicit, and satisfactory as to put the matter forever at rest." The Commissioners then set out the above quotation from Sanchez.
When a statute proposed by the California Code Commission for inclusion in the Penal Code of 1872 has been enacted by the Legislature without substantial change, the report of the commission is entitled to great weight in construing the statute and in determining the intent of the Legislature. (Keeler v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal. 3d 619, 630 [87 Cal. Rptr. 481, 470 P.2d 617, 40 A.L.R.3d 420].) The hope of the commissioners that the matter of distinguishing the degrees of murder had been laid forever to rest with our opinion in Sanchez as the guide to interpretation of section 189, has been largely fulfilled with respect to torture-murder d
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