Opinion ID: 6930065
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Passion/provocation manslaughter

Text: Kontakis contends that the trial court’s refusal to charge the jury on passion/provocation manslaughter, as provided in NJ.Stat.Ann. § 2C:ll-4(b)(2) (West 1982), violated his constitutional rights under Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980). 13 That section provides that a homicide which otherwise would be murder is manslaughter if it “is committed in the heat of passion resulting from a reasonable provocation.” In Beck, the Supreme Court held that in a capital case the trial court committed constitutional error when it would not charge on a lesser-included offense for which the evidence supported a conviction. The Court held that in a capital case in which a conviction for a lesser-included offense could be justified by the evidence, the jury should not be given an all-or-nothing choice. Kontakis, arguing from Beck, contends that the court’s refusal to give the passion/provoeation charge wrongfully precluded the jury from convicting him on that lesser-included offense. In support of this contention, Kontakis points to evidence that his wife left him, took his child, and committed adultery. He asserts that these circumstances caused him to act in the heat of passion when he shot her. The district court found that this evidence did not support a passion/provocation instruction, and we agree. 14 Under New Jersey law, passion/provocation manslaughter has four elements, one of which is that the provocation must be adequate. State v. Coyle, 119 N.J. 194, 574 A.2d 951, 967 (1990). In some circumstances, adequate provocation may be shown through a course of ill treatment that the defendant reasonably believed would continue. See State v. Guido, 40 N.J. 191, 191 A.2d 45, 56 (1963). But in this case, the state courts held that the evidence did not demonstrate a level of ill treatment sufficient to justify the charge under state law. We cannot reject this conclusion for there is, after all, no federal constitutional requirement that a state recognize marital misconduct as justifying a homicide or lessening the consequences which otherwise would follow from the homicide. Rather, it may prefer the more civilized approach of leaving the settlement of these disputes to the matrimonial courts. Nothing in Beck permits us to grant habeas relief when a state court refuses to charge a jury that it may convict a defendant for an offense when under state law the evidence could not justify the conviction.