 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
People v. Rios6/29/2000
On retrial after a prior acquittal of murder, defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for a homicide the jury found to be both unlawful (i.e., neither justified nor excused) and intentional. Defendant asserts, among other things, that the voluntary manslaughter instructions were prejudicially incomplete because they omitted the voluntary manslaughter "elements" that the killing must have occurred in a heat of passion upon sufficient provocation (hereafter heat of passion or provocation), or in the actual but unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense (hereafter imperfect self-defense). In effect, defendant urges that if the jury believed he committed an intentional, unlawful killing, without provocation or belief in the need to defend himself, it must acquit him of voluntary manslaughter.
We disagree. As we explain, neither heat of passion nor imperfect self-defense is an element of voluntary manslaughter that the People must affirmatively prove beyond reasonable doubt in order to obtain a conviction for that offense.
Manslaughter is an unlawful killing without malice, the element necessary for the greater offense of murder. Malice may arise when one kills, without legal justification or excuse, and with specific lethal intent or conscious indifference to the likelihood of death. However, provocation and imperfect self-defense, though they do not justify or excuse an intentional or consciously indifferent homicide, mitigate the offense by negating the murder element of malice, and thus limit the crime to manslaughter. By statute and long-standing case law, an intentional but nonmalicious criminal homicide is voluntary manslaughter but no lesser offense.
Accordingly, where murder liability is at issue, evidence of heat of passion or imperfect self-defense bears on whether an intentional or consciously indifferent criminal homicide was malicious, and thus murder, or nonmalicious, and thus the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter. In such cases, the People may have to prove the absence of provocation, or of any belief in the need for self-defense, in order to establish the malice element of murder.
But malice is not at issue upon a charge of voluntary manslaughter; indeed, a manslaughter charge concedes the absence of the murder element of malice. Hence, a conviction of voluntary manslaughter is supported by proof and findings, as here, that the homicide was unlawful and intentional. There is no additional need for the prosecution to establish that malice was lacking by reason of provocation or a belief in the need for self-defense.
The Court of Appeal was therefore correct in affirming defendant's voluntary manslaughter conviction against this challenge. No reason appears to address the remaining arguments raised by defendant, or to disturb the Court of Appeal's conclusion that these contentions also lack merit. We will therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
FACTS
Defendant's conviction arises from the fatal shooting of Anthony Reed on June 20, 1994. Defendant was originally charged with murder (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a)), with personal use of a firearm (§ 12022.5, subd. (a)). Trial on the original information began in March 1995. On April 7, 1995, the jury found defendant not guilty of murder and deadlocked on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense of murder. A mistrial was declared.
An amended information charged defendant with voluntary manslaughter (§ 192, subd. (a)), in that he "willfully, unlawfully, and without malice" killed Reed. It was alleged that the offense was committed with personal use of a firearm. The amended information also charged assault w
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 California DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|