Opinion ID: 1111213
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Feticide From Manslaughter

Text: (9) Defendant argues his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated because California's statutory scheme contains no provision for the crime of manslaughter in the killing of a fetus. He contends the statutory scheme is unconstitutional because it requires a finding of death eligibility whenever a defendant is found guilty of the first degree murder of a pregnant woman and any degree of murder of her fetus. Defendant suggests there is an inherent bias whenever the jury finds first degree murder of the mother. In these cases, defendant argues, the jury must then find the multiple-murder special circumstance to be true if it finds either degree of murder as to the fetus. The jury's only other choice at that point would be to find no crime for the fetus's death, because it does not have the option of a manslaughter verdict. This procedure, defendant contends, results in the unreliable, arbitrary, and capricious application of the death penalty in cases of feticide, particularly where the fetal killing is not first degree murder. Defendant further argues this scheme also violates equal protection because these double killings are treated differently from other multiple murders solely because the second killing was a feticide. All other defendants charged with multiple-murder special circumstances are entitled to manslaughter instructions for any killing if the evidence of malice is sufficiently doubtful to support instruction on the lesser included offense. As the Attorney General observes, these arguments simply recast defendant's assertions of a constitutional entitlement to jury instructions on the section 12022.9 enhancement as a lesser included or lesser related offense. That California law does not provide for the crime of manslaughter of a fetus does not result in an unreliable death eligibility determination if a defendant is charged with a multiple-murder special circumstance for the deaths of a pregnant woman and her fetus. The due process concern for a reliable factfinding process in capital cases that underlies Beck, supra, 447 U.S. 625, is not implicated solely because a defendant does not have a full panoply of lesser charges made available to the jury. ( Schad v. Arizona (1991) 501 U.S. 624, 645-646 [111 S.Ct. 2491, 2504-2505, 115 L.Ed.2d 555].) Our fundamental concern in Beck was that a jury convinced that the defendant had committed some violent crime but not convinced that he was guilty of a capital crime might nonetheless vote for a capital conviction if the only alternative was to set the defendant free with no punishment at all. ( Schad v. Arizona, supra, 501 U.S. at p. 646 [111 S.Ct. at p. 2504].) These concerns do not arise when the jury, as here, is not faced with that all-or-nothing choice between capital murder and acquittal. ( Id. at p. 647 [111 S.Ct. at p. 2505].) As we have already discussed, defendant's jury had several choices other than acquittal and capital murder in assessing his culpability for killing Doreen and her fetus. The trial court's instructions allowed the jury to return verdicts of second degree murder for both deaths and gave the jury the additional option of a verdict of voluntary manslaughter with respect to Doreen's killing. We do not find arbitrary, capricious, or irrational the distinction between a defendant whose jury may consider several manslaughter verdicts because of the state of the evidence and the victims' status, and a defendant whose jury may consider only one manslaughter verdict because the victims were a pregnant woman and her unborn fetus. The Legislature could reasonably and rationally conclude the unlawful killing of a fetus should be punished when committed with express or implied malice, but that when such a killing occurs upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion (§ 192, subd. (a)), the punishment for the crime against the mother is sufficient. In any event, it appears that a manslaughter instruction even as to Doreen's death was not called for in this case. The killings could not have occurred in a sudden quarrel or heat of passion. (§ 192, subd. (a).) They took place four years after the death of defendant's son and two years after the verdict in his wrongful death case. There was no claim of imperfect self-defense. The trial court gave no instructions on these theories. Instead, the court instructed the jury that mental disease or disorder could negate malice so that defendant's killing of Doreen could be the offense of manslaughter. This instruction was improper after the abolition of the diminished capacity defense, which occurred before defendant killed Doreen and her fetus. (See People v. Saille (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1103, 1115-1117 [2 Cal. Rptr.2d 364, 820 P.2d 588].) Of course, any error in giving a manslaughter instruction was harmless given the jury's verdict of murder.