Opinion ID: 1196421
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 16

Heading: Malice Instructions

Text: (21) Defendant next argues the instructions defining malice aforethought and intent to kill were confusing and contradictory, requiring that we reverse his conviction. His argument is based on the fact that in defining express malice, the jury was informed that Malice is express when there's manifested an intention unlawfully to kill a human being (CALJIC No. 8.11), whereas later it was told that The crime of voluntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought when there is an intent to kill. (CALJIC No. 8.40.) Thus, he claims the jury was first told malice is synonymous with the intent to kill but was later told there can be malice without an intent to kill. Defendant's contention is premised on an overly narrow and simplistic reading of the jury instructions. The definitions of express malice and voluntary manslaughter provided the jury were both correct and any potential conflict was obviated by other, explanatory instructions. For example, although the jury was instructed that an intent to kill is indicative of express malice, the jury was also instructed on implied malice, which does not require the specific intent to kill. Additional instructions outlined some specific circumstances in which malice is deemed absent although a person intended to kill the victim, such as heat of passion, sudden quarrel, and adequate provocation. In such situations, the jury was instructed that the crime is manslaughter, not murder. Although defendant finds potential confusion in the instructions pertaining to homicide, he does so by isolating certain passages without considering the instructions as a whole. Significantly, the jury was instructed not to single out any certain sentence or individual point or instruction and ignore the others. You are to consider all of the instructions as a whole and are to regard each in the light of all the others. Read together, the instructions adequately define malice and its relationship to the intent to kill. We thus find no error.