Opinion ID: 1379313
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: effect of instructions upon defense of honest but unreasonable mistake

Text: (2) Defendant contends that an erroneous jury instruction deprived him of the defense that he did not intend to kill the victims because he honestly but mistakenly believed they were dead when he inflicted the fatal blows. He concedes that the instruction authorized the defense if the honest mistake was found to be reasonable but complains that the instruction improperly deprived him of the defense if the mistake was found to be honest but unreasonable. Defendant requested, and the court orally gave, the following jury instruction: An act committed or an admission [ sic : omission] made under an ignorance or mistake of fact which disproves any criminal intent is not a crime. Thus a person is not guilty of a crime if he commits an act or omits to act under an honest or reasonable belief in the existence of certain facts and circumstances which, if true, would make such act or omission lawful. (Italics added.) During jury deliberations, however, the jury requested and was given a written copy of the instructions in which the phrase honest or reasonable, italicized in the foregoing quotation, appeared as honest and reasonable (italics added). Defendant now contends that the written form of the instruction, which conformed to CALJIC No. 4.35, erroneously precluded the jury from giving exculpatory effect to a mistake on his part that was honest even if not reasonable. We need not decide what effect, if any, an honest but unreasonable belief that the victims were dead when defendant inflicted the fatal blows would have had upon his criminal liability for their deaths. Whatever the merits such a mistake-of-fact theory may have in the abstract, it has no application to this case. A court is required to instruct on a theory of the case only if it is supported by substantial evidence. ( People v. Flannel, supra, 25 Cal.3d at pp. 684-685.) No such evidence exists even under defendant's version of the facts. Defendant played an active role both in the acts which actually killed the victims and in the acts which, under his theory, he believed killed them. When a person commits an act based on a mistake of fact, his guilt or innocence is determined as if the facts were as he perceived them. ( People v. Rivera (1984) 157 Cal. App.3d 736, 743 [203 Cal. Rptr. 842].) Here, if the facts were as defendant supposedly perceived them, he still actively participated in both murders. Even if the jury had found that defendant thought Patty was already dead when he shot her, and that he thought Stacy was dead when he slit her throat, his participation in both crimes was not limited to the shooting or the throat slitting. With regard to Patty, defendant acknowledged that he was aware that she was going to be killed while they were still in his apartment. He drove with Forrester and Patty to a remote area. When Patty got out of the van and began pleading for her life, defendant loaded the gun for Forrester, who shot her twice. As to Stacy, before slitting her throat, defendant held one end of the wire around her throat while Rutherford pulled on the other end. A belief, even if genuine, that different acts by defendant helped kill the victims than the acts that actually did so would not make defendant's actions lawful. Such a belief would not absolve defendant of the murders. The court was therefore under no duty to instruct on the defense. There was no error.