Source: http://academy.lawofselfdefense.com/law_case/people-v-elmore-325-p-3d-951-ca-supreme-court-2014/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 03:59:01+00:00

Document:
Eric R. Larson, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
The prosecutor was no more successful at eliciting a coherent version of the events. Defendant said that when he was at the bus stop, “They said something to me.” He denied asking Suggs for money or being angry that she would not give him any. He admitted making the paintbrush into a weapon “after I got up. I was mad and scared.” He then said he did not know if he had made it and thought he picked it up in that condition.  He admitted stabbing Suggs, but claimed the act was unintentional. He denied trying to steal anything.
The bifurcated approach offers substantial benefits to the defense. At the guilt phase, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the offense, including mens rea. The defendant has the opportunity to obtain an acquittal or a verdict on a lesser included offense, without having to claim insanity and risk the prospect of involuntary commitment for psychiatric treatment. The defense has available the panoply of strategies open to legally sane defendants, including unreasonable self-defense based on mistake of fact. It may choose to put on no evidence, or it may introduce any relevant and admissible evidence on the question of guilt. If the defendant is found not guilty, the trial is over. If there is a conviction, the trial moves to the second phase, devoted to the question of legal sanity. There the defendant bears the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence, and may befound not guilty by reason of insanity. This process affords the defense two chances at a favorable verdict.
KENNARD, J., [*]Concurring and Dissenting.—Murder requires malice. (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a) (all statutory citations are to the Penal Code).) Malice is lacking when a person kills in the reasonable belief that the killing is necessary to avert an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury (self-defense); because the killing is justified, no crime is committed. Malice is also lacking when a person kills in the unreasonable belief that self-defense is necessary, a concept known as “imperfect self-defense”; in that situation the killing is voluntary manslaughter, a lesser offense necessarily included in murder. (In re Christian S. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 768, 771 [30 Cal. Rptr. 2d 33, 872 P.2d 574] (Christian S.).) But what crime is committed when the unreasonable belief stems entirely from a delusion caused by a mental disorder? The majority says the crime is murder. I disagree. In my view, the offense is voluntary manslaughter. Although I agree with the majority that the trial court here properly rejected defendant’s request for a jury instruction on voluntary manslaughter based on imperfect self-defense, I do so for different reasons (see pt. III, post).
Sheldon Daniels (defendant’s uncle) and Deniece Bonner (Daniels’s girlfriend) testified that on the morning of the killing they saw defendant at the home of defendant’s grandmother; defendant seemed “excited and agitated” and acted as if he were “on sherm.”  They again saw defendant later that morning in a church parking lot. Bonner said that defendant did not talk rationally and for no apparent reason crawled under a car. Daniels and Bonner took defendant back to his grandmother’s home, where Bonner gave defendant seven dollars and some bus tokens. Defendant then left.
*. Retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.
1. Paintbrushes of the same kind, though not sharpened, were available to the residents at defendant’s rehabilitation facility.
2. The Attorney General has not sought review. Thus, we have no occasion to consider this aspect of the Court of Appeal’s judgment.
3. Further unspecified statutory references are to the Penal Code.
9. See State v. Ordway (1997) 261 Kan. 776 [934 P.2d 94, 104] (“the ‘unreasonable but honest belief’ necessary to support the ‘imperfect right to self-defense manslaughter’ cannot be based upon a psychotic delusion”); Commonwealth v. Sheppard (1994) 436 Pa. Super. 584 [648 A.2d 563, 567] (imperfect self-defense “does not contemplate diagnosed mental disorders as a shield to a defendant … but rather speaks to a misperception of the factual circumstances”); accord, Commonwealth v. Sepulveda (2012) 618 Pa. 262 [55 A.3d 1108, 1126]; Peterson v. State (1994) 101 Md. App. 153 [643 A.2d 520, 522] (rejecting claim that imperfect self-defense requires no more than subjective honest belief, and holding that “the imperfect self-defense instruction should not be given unless the evidence generates the issue of whether, under the circumstances, the defendant was entitled to take some action against the victim”); State v. Seifert (1990) 155 Wis. 2d 53 [454 N.W.2d 346, 352] (“The doctrine of imperfect self-defense manslaughter was simply never intended to cover situations … where it is entirely the defendant’s mental disease or defect, not an error in judgment or perception or a negligently-formed perspective of the situation, that motivates the defendant’s actions.”).
11. We note that legal “insanity” is a term of art, defined by statute in conformity with the M’Naghten rule. It may differ from medical or popular usage.
13. Section 1020 provides, in relevant part: “All matters of fact tending to establish a defense other than one specified in the … sixth subdivision of Section 1016, may be given in evidence under the plea of not guilty.” Subdivision 6 of section 1016 authorizes the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
14. Wells has been described as “[t]he first step in the development of the diminished capacity doctrine” (People v. Saille, supra, 54 Cal.3d. at p. 1109), and the diminished capacity defense was sometimes called the “ ‘Wells-Gorshen rule’ ” (1 Witkin & Epstein, Cal. Criminal Law, supra, Defenses, § 26, p. 454; see People v. Gorshen (1959) 51 Cal.2d 716 [336 P.2d 492]). Nevertheless, as discussed above, Wells went no further than recognizing the concept of diminished actuality that is now codified in section 28.
16. The approach taken by the concurring and dissenting opinion would permit defendants to make identical showings of delusional belief in the need for self-defense at both the guilt and sanity phases. The Legislature, however, has clearly rejected that option.

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