Opinion ID: 1167454
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Instruction as to intoxication.

Text: [9] The court refused to give defendant's requested instruction based upon People v. Gorshen (1959) 51 Cal.2d 716, 727 [336 P.2d 492]. The instruction read as follows: You are further instructed that expert evidence of unconsciousness resulting from voluntary intoxication is received, not as a `complete defense' negating capacity to commit any crime, but as a `partial defense' negating specific mental state essential to a particular crime. (Italics added.) The court, however, instructed the jury that: Specific intent to kill is not a necessary element of second degree murder, but is a necessary element of the kind of first degree murder described as willful, deliberate and premeditated killing. Without passing on the merits of the requested instruction, we believe that the complete answer to defendant's contention lies in his failure to adduce expert evidence of unconsciousness resulting from voluntary intoxication. In fact, the opinion of the expert witness, as implemented by the testimony of defendant's acquaintances who observed his relevant behavior, defeated any possible inference of defendant's voluntary intoxication to the point of unconsciousness. Several witnesses testified that defendant's behavior in their presence during the weekend in question appeared normal. Dr. Lentz, who later testified as an expert witness for the defense, had, as a court-appointed psychiatrist, submitted to the court a report indicating that defendant's asserted intoxication from drugs during the weekend although not exculpatory, might be considered mitigating. At the trial, however, he stated that the benzedrine and barbiturate drugs which defendant claimed to have taken would be incapable of producing toxic psychosis and that unless defendant had reached a degree of drug intoxication readily apparent to lay observers he would remain capable of calculated judgment. People on the street would be able to say, well, there was something odd about this reaction.... This state, or this severity ... would surely show to anybody. Dr. Lentz further testified that in his opinion defendant, at the time of the perpetration of the crimes, possessed the ability to premeditate and deliberate.