Opinion ID: 2058374
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Imperfect Self-Defense-Aggravated Manslaughter.

Text: Defendant's counsel acknowledged in his opening statement that defendant had killed Paul Reynolds and Stacey Elizardo, but asserted that the homicides had occurred in the heat of passion provoked by reasonable provocation. According to defense counsel's review of the evidence in summation, the provocation consisted of Reynolds' making insulting and mocking remarks to Pitts, Reynolds' suggesting that Stacey was engaging in prostitution to earn money for drugs, an exchange of pushes and shoves, and, finally, Reynolds' telling Pitts that he was going to his bedroom to get a gun. As requested, the trial court charged the jury on passion/provocation manslaughter as a lesser-included offense of murder. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4b(2). Defendant did not request a charge of aggravated manslaughter, but did request the trial court to instruct the jury on the doctrine of imperfect self-defense. The argument advanced was that defendant's honest, but not necessarily reasonable, belief that Reynolds' threat to get a gun endangered defendant's safety constituted sufficient provocation to support a verdict of passion/provocation manslaughter. The trial court denied the requested instruction. Before this Court, defendant renews his contention that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury on the doctrine of imperfect self-defense. Alternatively, defendant contends that our decision in State v. Bowens, 108 N.J. 622 (1987), filed after trial but before argument of defendant's appeal, requires a trial court to charge aggravated manslaughter whenever evidence offered to prove imperfect self-defense is material to the state of mind required to prove murder. In State v. Bowens, supra , we reviewed the sequence of events leading to adoption of the provisions of the Code of Criminal Justice (the Code) relating to self-defense. Id. at 629. We noted that the legislature expressly rejected a subjective test for self-defense, adopting instead a standard of objective reasonableness to determine when a decision to use force for self-protection was justifiable under the Code. Ibid.; see N.J.S.A. 2C:3-4(a). In Bowens, we also concluded that an honest but unreasonable belief in the need to use force for self-protection, insufficient under the Code to justify an otherwise unlawful homicide, could not of itself constitute a basis for mitigating homicide to an unspecified form of manslaughter. Id. at 630-31. Nevertheless, we observed in Bowens that evidence of facts sufficient to establish imperfect self-defense may in certain cases bear directly on the question of whether the homicide was knowing or purposeful, and would be admissible to counter these essential elements of the offense of murder. Id. at 632. We noted examples of circumstances in which an unreasonable but honest belief in the need to use force could be pertinent to the elements of Code offenses: An example given by the Attorney General of the multi-faceted nature of the defense includes the overreaction in self-defense to aggressive or threatening conduct, e.g., shooting to kill an unarmed attacker who has fallen to the ground. He noted that to the extent the victim's conduct constitutes reasonable provocation the offense may be mitigated to become the Legislature's special homicide offense, passion-provocation manslaughter. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b)(2). Evidence of imperfect self-defense does not justify the conduct, it mitigates the offense. Another example given is the reckless use of mortal force in self-defense, as when one seeking to repel an attacker disregards a risk that pushing the aggressor down a cliff will result in death. That person may not have committed murder purposely or knowingly but may be guilty of one of the forms of manslaughter: either reckless homicide under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b)(1) or reckless homicide manifesting extreme indifference to human life under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(a). The evidence bears on the essential elements of a Code offense. [ Id. at 633.] Accordingly, we held in Bowens that although imperfect self-defense was not recognized by the Code as a justification for otherwise unlawful conduct, in many cases the issues of the reasonableness of the defendant's conduct presented to the jury in defense of the substantive crimes charged will have relevance to the essential elements of the homicidal act: whether it was the actor's conscious object to inflict deadly force, whether death was almost certain to follow, or whether the act was done recklessly or with reasonable provocation. [ Id. at 634.] Defendant contends that our holding in Bowens compels the conclusion that the trial court committed reversible error in failing, sua sponte, to charge aggravated manslaughter on the basis of the evidence that defendant killed Reynolds because of an honest but unreasonable fear for his own safety. However, as we explained in Bowens, not every claim of imperfect self-defense leads to an aggravated manslaughter charge. The predicate for such an instruction, when it is based on evidence of imperfect self-defense, is that such evidence either negates the mental state required for murder, or demonstrates acts of provocation on the part of the victim to an extent sufficient to afford the jury a rational basis for convicting the defendant of one of the Code's forms of manslaughter. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4a and 4b; see id. at 633. In this case, defendant testified that Reynolds made a move to one of the bedrooms    to get this gun, and it was at that time    that I pulled the knife out from the back of me and assaulting [ sic ] Paul with that knife. Defendant described the assault as almost an instantaneous like reflex, committed in a frenzied type state of mind. We construe defendant's testimony relating the Reynolds murder to Reynolds' threat to get this gun as relevant to the crime of passion/provocation manslaughter, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4b(2), on which the trial court charged the jury. However, defendant's version of the Reynolds' homicide does not present facts that negate the state of mind indispensable for a conviction of murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(1) and (2), or afford the jury a rational basis on which to convict defendant of either aggravated or reckless manslaughter. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4a or 4b(1). No aspect of defendant's testimony suggested that his state of mind was reckless. [2] Accordingly, we find no error in the trial court's failure to charge aggravated or reckless manslaughter on its own initiative based on defendant's testimony offered to prove imperfect self-defense in connection with the Reynolds homicide.