Opinion ID: 2298341
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Requested Instruction Sufficiently Covered By Other Instructions

Text: [¶ 28] Hanaman also contends that the court erred when it refused to give an adequate provocation manslaughter instruction because such an instruction was subsumed by instructions on self-defense and imperfect self-defense. We recognize that both instructions are sometimes given. See, e.g., State v. Savage, 573 A.2d 25, 26-27 (Me.1990) (holding that the trial court's careful instructions on self-defense and adequate provocation manslaughter would not have confused the jury). However, it is the rare case in which a factfinder could find that the State has carried its burden of disproving self-defense and then go on to find, under the same set of facts, that the defendant has nonetheless carried his burden of proving adequate provocation manslaughter. [6] This is not one of those cases. Under the facts of this case, we cannot conclude that the court erred when it determined that self-defense instructions, with a burden of proof more favorable to Hanaman, subsumed an instruction as to adequate provocation manslaughter. [¶ 29] Hanaman contends that the evidence shows that, after he attempted to seize the bag of drug evidence, the victim adequately provoked him to extreme anger or fear by making a potentially threatening motion while holding a shiny object in her hand, and that her action should be viewed against the backdrop of her history of drug use and combative and assaultive behavior toward Hanaman. Under Hanaman's view of the law, an adequate provocation instruction could be generated virtually any time a person, while under a defendant's attack, attempts to defend himself or herself, and is then killed in the defendant's attack. But self-defense against an attack cannot itself become an adequate provocation that can reduce murder to manslaughter. The entry is: Judgment affirmed.