Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: Failure to Instruct on Heat-of-Passion Manslaughter

Text: Turning to his conviction for the murder of Debbie Cimmino, defendant complains that the court, while it gave a general instruction on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense of murder, did not specifically instruct that malice aforethought is negated, and the crime reduced to voluntary manslaughter, when the killer acts in a heat of passion arising from sufficient provocation. ( People v. Breverman (1998) 19 Cal.4th 142, 163, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094.) He argues the evidence supported a scenario in which defendant and Debbie began a consensual sexual encounter in Debbie's car, defendant failed sexually, was ridiculed by Debbie Cimmino, and reacted to that provocation with homicidal rage. We reject the contention because there was simply no evidence, much less substantial evidence, presented to support the provocation theory. Defendant, who testified regarding his actions on the morning of the killings, stated that when he first saw Debbie that morning she was already dead. Nor did the fragmentary narrative defendant gave police in his March 22 statement include any account of a consensual sexual encounter. The condition of Debbie's body and car indicated a violent struggle and forcible penetration, not a consensual encounter. As no reasonable jury could infer from the evidence as a whole that Debbie Cimmino provoked defendant into killing her, the court did not err, under California law, in failing to instruct on that theory of voluntary manslaughter. ( People v. Breverman, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 162, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094; People v. Barton (1995) 12 Cal.4th 186, 194-195, 200-201, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 569, 906 P.2d 531.) Nor, contrary to defendant's claim, did the trial court deprive defendant of any right under the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution in failing to give instructions consistent with the theory, for no fundamental unfairness or loss of verdict reliability results from the lack of instructions on a lesser included offense that is unsupported by any evidence upon which a reasonable jury could rely. While this court in People v. Breverman, supra, 19 Cal.4th at page 170, footnote 19, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094, recently declined to decide whether failure to instruct on a lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter supported by the evidence is federal constitutional error (see also id. at pp. 189-190, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.) [arguing failure to instruct violates Constitution [w]here . . . there is sufficient evidence of heat of passion to support a voluntary manslaughter verdict]), nothing in either the majority or dissenting Breverman opinion suggests that the federal Constitution, any more than the California Constitution, is infringed when a theory of voluntary manslaughter unsupported by any substantial evidence is omitted from the law presented to the jury.