Court Opinion

ID: 9685307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:29:56.731432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:04.524882
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J.,
Dissenting. — In a murder case, when there is substantial evidence that the killing occurred “upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion” (Pen. Code, § 192, subd. (a)), or that the killing resulted from the defendant’s unreasonable belief that self-defense was necessary (People v. Cruz (2008) 44 Cal.4th 636, 664 [80 Cal.Rptr.3d 126, 187 P.3d 970]; People v. Flannel (1979) 25 Cal.3d 668, 680-683 [160 Cal.Rptr. 84, 603 P.2d 1]), the trial court must instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter, which is a lesser offense of murder. Here, the trial court instructed the jury on the latter theory, but it refused the defense request to instruct on the former theory. In upholding that ruling, the majority describes as “insubstantial” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 540) the evidence tending to show that the killing occurred in the heat of passion. I disagree.
I
Defendant and his girlfriend Kandie Sanchez lived in the home of Kandie’s mother in Rowland Heights, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County. Also living there was Kandie’s 20-year-old daughter, Jessica Sanchez.
On the night of February 11, 2006, Kandie’s mother and daughter quarreled with defendant; they wanted him to move out. After saying that her boyfriend could “kick [defendant’s] ass,” Jessica called her boyfriend, Ronnie Urrutia, and asked him to come over.
At the time, Ronnie Urrutia was at a party in Fontana with his brother Mark (the victim) and three friends (Carlos Munoz, Ruben Ibarra, and a man named Rudy, whose last name does not appear in the record). All five had been drinking. After Jessica’s call, they went to the Sanchez home, where *560they encountered defendant and codefendants Daniel Avendano and Jorge Lopez. A fistfight ensued between defendant and Ronnie. The two struggled on the ground. When defendant got on top of Ronnie, the latter’s friends Munoz and Ibarra ticked defendant, and Mark hit defendant twice in the back with a baseball bat while Ronnie held defendant down. Ibarra, who was intoxicated, threw a bottle at defendant. After the fight ended, defendant, who was still angry, chased Ronnie with a kitchen knife as Ronnie and Jessica were leaving; to protect Ronnie, Munoz hit defendant in the arm with a broken ski pole.
The next day, Carlos Munoz discovered that he had lost his glasses during the fight. He then walked over to the Sanchez house to look for them. With him were his brother Jose and a friend, Santos Buenrostros. They saw defendant, Avendano, and Lopez, and heard them talk: One asked if the three men (Carlos, Jose, and Buenrostros) were “them” (presumably referring to Mark and his brother Ronnie); another replied, “that’s not them,” to which the first responded, “Oh, good, because if it was I was about to do something.” Defendant, Avendano, and Lopez got into a white car and drove off. Carlos called Mark, who was with his friend Ruben Ibarra, and warned him that defendant and his friends were looting for Mark. Mark suggested meeting a couple of blocks away.
As Mark and Ibarra were on their way, Ibarra saw a white car driving fast towards them. The car stopped abruptly and out came defendant, Avendano, and Lopez. Ibarra heard defendant say, “Come on, . . . let’s get these motherfuckers.” Ibarra and Mark, who was carrying a baseball bat, climbed a fence and split up. While defendant and Avendano chased Mark, Lopez pursued Ibarra, who ran to a shed. When the coast was clear, Ibarra found Mark lying 100 yards from the fence, with serious head injuries.
About that time, Carlos, Jose, and Buenrostros came upon defendant’s white car, which was parked with all its doors open. Moments later, defendant, Avendano, and Lopez were seen jumping over a fence. They looked nervous. Defendant was carrying two baseball bats, which he put in the trunk of the car. Defendant and his two companions then drove off. Later that morning, Christine Lopez was in front of her home, not far from the scene of the tilling, when she saw a white car carrying three men she did not know; the men were laughing loudly. She saw them throw something out of the car. One of the men said they had “lit him up” or “lighted up.” At trial, she identified two of the men as defendant and Avendano. Police recovered Mark’s baseball bat in a storm drain near the area where Christine Lopez had seen the men in the white car. Bloodstains on the handle of the bat matched defendant’s DNA profile, while bloodstains on the barrel matched Mark’s DNA profile.
*561Mark died of his injuries. He sustained at least four blows to the head and three to the rest of his body. There were wounds on his hands that could have been defensive wounds, but also might have resulted from climbing the fence.
According to Kandie Sanchez, after the killing defendant returned to the Sanchez home, looking “all upset”; he quickly departed, leaving his belongings behind. She did not see him again until she testified at defendant’s trial. Defendant was arrested three weeks after he killed Mark.
Defendant testified that on the day of the killing he was driving to a store when he saw a man whom he believed to be Ronnie Urrutia (the boyfriend of his girlfriend’s daughter) walking down the street with another man. Defendant decided to talk to Ronnie about the previous night’s fight, and he asked Avendano and Lopez to go with him for protection. As they were driving down the street, defendant saw Mark (Ronnie’s brother) with Ibarra. When defendant stopped to talk to them, Mark kicked defendant’s car, after which Mark and Ibarra fled over a fence. Upset that Mark had kicked his car, defendant chased Mark, catching up to him in a field. When defendant was about four feet away, Mark turned and said, “yeah, now I got you.” Mark then attacked defendant with a baseball bat, hitting defendant’s arms and hands, which defendant used to protect his face. After Mark swung the bat four or five times, defendant managed to take it away. Mark continued to come towards defendant, who then hit Mark’s arm with the baseball bat. Mark “still trie[d] to attack” defendant, who, fearing that Mark would grab the bat back and injure him, kept hitting Mark until he fell. At this point defendant got scared and ran off, carrying the baseball bat with him. Later, he threw the bat in the gutter.
n
A defendant who unlawfully kills “upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion” (Pen. Code, § 192, subd. (a)) lacks malice, and is therefore guilty not of murder but of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter. “Heat of passion arises when ‘at the time of the killing, the reason of the accused was obscured or disturbed by passion to such an extent as would cause the ordinarily reasonable person of average disposition to act rashly and without deliberation and reflection, and from such passion rather than from judgment.’ ” (People v. Barton (1995) 12 Cal.4th 186, 201 [47 Cal.Rptr.2d 569, 906 P.2d 531] (Barton).)
“Heat of passion” will reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter only if there is adequate provocation. The victim’s conduct “must be sufficiently provocative that it would cause an ordinary person of average disposition to *562act rashly or without due deliberation and reflection. [Citations.]” (People v. Lee (1999) 20 Cal.4th 47, 59 [82 Cal.Rptr.2d 625, 971 P.2d 1001].)
A trial court must instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter arising from a sudden quarrel or heat of passion when there is evidence from which a jury of reasonable persons could conclude that the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter, but not the greater offense of murder, was committed. (People v. Breverman (1998) 19 Cal.4th 142, 162 [77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094] (Breverman).) Any doubts on the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant an instruction on voluntary manslaughter should be resolved in the defendant’s favor. (People v. Tufunga (1999) 21 Cal.4th 935, 944 [90 Cal.Rptr.2d 143, 987 P.2d 168]; People v. Flannel, supra, 25 Cal.3d at p. 685.)
Here, defendant contends that the following three acts by victim Mark Urrutia constituted provocation that “would cause an ordinary person of average disposition to act rashly or without due deliberation and reflection” (People v. Lee, supra, 20 Cal.4th at p. 59): (1) The night before the killing, Mark hit defendant with a baseball bat; (2) shortly before the killing, Mark (according to defendant) angered defendant by kicking his car; (3) immediately before the killing, Mark (according to defendant) hit defendant with a baseball bat.
The majority holds that neither the first nor the second of these three acts by the victim furnished the requisite provocation. The majority points out that there was a long “cooling-off” period after the first act (hitting defendant with the baseball bat the night before the killing), and that the second act (kicking defendant’s car on the day of the killing) was not sufficiently provocative to cause an ordinary person to act without due deliberation or reflection. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 551-552.) I agree.
The majority does not, however, decide whether the third act (hitting defendant with the baseball bat just before the killing) constituted adequate provocation. It concludes that even if it was, there was no substantial evidence that defendant acted “rashly or without due deliberation and reflection” (People v. Lee, supra, 20 Cal.4th at p. 59) when he killed Mark, and therefore the trial court was not required to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter arising from a “sudden quarrel or heat of passion” (Pen. Code, § 192, subd. (a)). I disagree.
True, there was no direct evidence that defendant was acting in the heat of passion when he hit Mark with the baseball bat: Defendant told the jury that he had killed Mark in self-defense, apparently in an attempt to gain a verdict of not guilty. But as explained below, there was circumstantial evidence that defendant acted in the heat of passion. The jury should not have to choose *563between believing defendant’s self-serving testimony that he acted in self-defense — and therefore should not be found guilty — and accepting the prosecution’s argument that the killing was murder. “ ‘Our courts are not gambling halls but forums for the discovery of truth.’ [Citation.] Truth may lie neither with the defendant’s protestations of innocence nor with the prosecution’s assertion that the defendant is guilty of the offense charged, but at a point between these two extremes: the evidence may show that the defendant is guilty of some intermediate offense included within, but lesser than, the crime charged. A trial court’s failure to inform the jury of its option to find the defendant guilty of the lesser offense would impair the jury’s truth-ascertainment function.” (Barton, supra, 12 Cal.4th at p. 196.)
Here, there was substantial circumstantial evidence from which the jury could have reasonably concluded that defendant killed Mark in a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion. There was evidence that when Mark hit defendant with a baseball bat the night before the killing, defendant became so angry that he chased Mark’s brother Ronnie — who had been in a fight with defendant when Mark hit defendant with the bat — with a kitchen knife. There was also evidence that defendant again became upset when Mark, according to defendant, kicked defendant’s car shortly before the killing. From this evidence the jury could have reasonably inferred that just before the killing defendant again became enraged when, according to defendant, Mark — as he had done the night before — hit defendant with a baseball bat. Therefore, the trial court erred when it refused to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter arising from a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.
I turn now to the complex question of whether this instructional error was prejudicial.
IH
In Breverman, this court held that “the trial court erred . . . when it failed to instruct ... on heat of passion as a theory of voluntary manslaughter.” (Breverman, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 164.) To assess prejudice, the Breverman majority fashioned this general rule: When a trial court fails to instruct the jury on “all lesser included offenses and theories thereof which are supported by the evidence” (id. at p. 178), the error is a violation of state law, not the federal Constitution (id. at p. 165), and is prejudicial only if “it is reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the appealing party would have been reached in the absence of the error” (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243]).
I disagreed with that prejudice test. My dissenting opinion in Breverman explained: “Given the manner in which California has structured the relationship between murder and voluntary manslaughter, the complete definition of *564malice is the intent to kill or the intent to do a dangerous act with conscious disregard of its danger plus the absence of both heat of passion and unreasonable self-defense. Where . . . there is sufficient evidence of heat of passion to support a voluntary manslaughter verdict, murder instructions that fail to inform the jury it may not find the defendant guilty of murder if heat of passion is present are incomplete instructions on the element of malice.” (Breverman, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 189-190 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) Such a failure to instruct, I concluded, is “federal constitutional error” (id. at p. 194 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.)), because it gives the jury an incomplete definition of malice, which is an element of the charged crime of murder.
The Breverman majority saw no need to respond to my dissent because, according to the majority, the theory underlying my dissenting opinion had not been raised by the defendant either in the Court of Appeal or in this court. (Breverman, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 170, fn. 19.) I was of the view that the defendant had preserved the issue. (Id. at pp. 191-194 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).)
This court has yet to resolve the issue I raised in my dissenting opinion in Breverman. (See People v. Lasko (2000) 23 Cal.4th 101, 113 [96 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 999 P.2d 666] [explaining that Breverman did not decide the question].)
Here, defendant’s argument on prejudice is premised on the applicability of the Watson harmless-error standard, which applies to state law violations. Applying that test, the majority concludes that “even if it was error to fail to instruct on heat of passion voluntary manslaughter on this record, any such error was harmless as it is not reasonably probable defendant would have obtained a more favorable outcome had the jury been so instructed.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 556.) In my view, however, the trial court’s failure to instruct on the heat of passion theory of voluntary manslaughter was federal constitutional error “because the trial court. . . inadequately instructed the jury on the elements of murder by failing to explain that the element of malice is not present when the defendant kills in the heat of passion.” (People v. Lasko, supra, 23 Cal.4th at p. 113.)1
When an instruction violates the federal Constitution, prejudice is measured by whether the prosecution can show beyond a reasonable doubt that the error was harmless. (Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 *565L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824].) Under that test, a reviewing court “asks whether the record contains evidence that could rationally lead to a contrary finding” by the jury. (Neder v. United States (1999) 527 U.S. 1, 19 [144 L.Ed.2d 35, 119 S.Ct. 1827].) Here, as I have explained, the record contains substantial evidence that defendant was acting in the heat of passion when he killed Mark Urrutia. Based on that evidence, the jury could have rationally concluded that defendant lacked malice and was guilty not of murder but of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.
I would affirm the Court of Appeal’s judgment, which had reversed defendant’s murder conviction.

I reach this conclusion notwithstanding defendant’s failure to argue in this court that the trial court’s instructional error violated the federal Constitution. (See maj. opn., ante, at p. 558, fn. 5 [noting that defendant has not raised the issue]; People v. Williams (1998) 17 Cal.4th 148, 162, fn. 6 [69 Cal.Rptr.2d 917, 948 P.2d 429] [“An appellate court is generally not prohibited from reaching a question that has not been preserved for review by a party. .. . Whether or not it should do so is entrusted to its discretion.”].)