Opinion ID: 1176393
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Apparently Disabled Assailant.

Text: (30a) Defendant challenges the following instruction as being erroneous, confusing, and incomplete: The right of self-defense ceases to exist when there is no longer any apparent danger of further violence on the part of an assailant. Thus where a person is attacked under circumstances which justify his exercise of the right of self-defense, and thereafter he uses such force upon his attacker as to render the attacker incapable of inflicting further injuries, the law of self-defense then ceases to work in favor of the person attacked. (CALJIC No. 5.53.) As defendant points out, the first sentence is a correct statement of the law but the second sentence, intended as a specific illustration, omits the important qualification that the danger need only be apparent rather than real. [10] This omission is particularly significant in the present case, defendant maintains, because of his statements, received in evidence at trial, that he strangled Ernest after shooting him. According to the testimony of the autopsy surgeon, the gunshot wound would have caused immediate unconsciousness and thus rendered Ernest incapable of inflicting further injuries on defendant. The danger perceived by defendant is that the jury, after concluding that he acted in self-defense in shooting Ernest, may have based the murder conviction on the act of strangulation without pausing to consider whether defendant believed, either reasonably or unreasonably, that he was still in imminent peril. [11] The jury was instructed, in the language of CALJIC No. 5.51 (1977 rev.), that the right of self-defense is the same whether the perceived danger is real or only apparent, so long as the defendant entertains an honest and reasonable belief in the necessity for self-defense. The jury was also instructed, in the language of CALJIC No. 5.17, that an honest but unreasonable belief in the existence of imminent peril is not a complete defense but reduces a criminal homicide from murder to manslaughter. (See People v. Flannel (1979) 25 Cal.3d 668, 674-680 [160 Cal. Rptr. 84, 603 P.2d 1].) (31) It is well established in California that the correctness of jury instructions is to be determined from the entire charge of the court, not from a consideration of parts of an instruction or from a particular instruction. [Citations.] `[T]he fact that the necessary elements of a jury charge are to be found in two instructions rather than in one instruction does not, in itself, make the charge prejudicial.' [Citation.] `The absence of an essential element in one instruction may be supplied by another or cured in light of the instructions as a whole.' [Citation.] ( People v. Burgener (1986) 41 Cal.3d 505, 538-539 [224 Cal. Rptr. 112, 714 P.2d 1251].) (30b) Viewing the charge as a whole, it is not reasonably probable that the jury was confused regarding the law of self-defense as it relates to a defendant's reasonable or unreasonable belief in imminent peril when the defendant's attacker has become incapacitated. In concluding that no prejudice resulted from any of the claimed errors related to instructions on self-defense, we have considered, in addition to the specific factors previously mentioned, that the jury convicted defendant of the murder of Edward P. as well as the murder of Ernest P., and that both murders were found to have been committed with premeditation and deliberation. These verdicts indicate a complete rejection of the evidence on which defendant relied to establish self-defense.