Opinion ID: 1227864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Excusable Homicide.

Text: (15) The court gave CALJIC No. 5.01  Excusable Homicide  Heat of Passion. [6] Defendant now urges that the court should have given CALJIC No. 5.00. [7] The claim is that, inasmuch as 5.01 precludes accident as a defense if a firearm is used, the jury may have concluded that the defense of accident was not available to defendant. The reasoning is circuitous for, as we have noted, defendant consistently claimed that he used no weapon against Martha. Insofar as an accident theory is supported by the evidence, it is highly questionable that any instruction on this theory was required. When defendant left the scene and before he was arrested, he told his cousin, it was an accident. When amplified by later statements of defendant and by his testimony at trial, it became clear that at no time did he claim to have killed Martha by accident. His claim was, instead, that she killed herself by accident as he struggled with her in defense of himself. Complete instructions were given on self defense, on first and second degree murder and manslaughter as well as the presumption of innocence, reasonable doubt, burden of proof and the principle for testing the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence. Defendant neither requested an instruction on excusable homicide nor did he object to the instruction given. It would not have been error to refuse an instruction on justifiable homicide based on accident ( People v. Ogg (1958) 159 Cal. App.2d 38, 52-53 [323 P.2d 117]), and it is not reasonably probable that a different result would have been reached had the instruction not been given at all.