Court Opinion

ID: 9726374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:46:38.515446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:26.588495
License: Public Domain

NEWSOM, J.
I dissent.
This is, of course, not the first time that Judge Golde’s improvised homicide instructions have been challenged on appeal,* nor the first time that I have disagreed with my respected colleagues concerning, not necessarily the correctness of the questioned instructions in the context *1017of a murder trial, but their impact on the thought-process of the jury under the precise circumstances of a given case.
After shooting Lewis twice and watching him fall helpless, face down on the ground, appellant calmly walked over, stood over him and fired three more rounds into the back of his head. On what rational basis could so deliberate and brutal an act have been viewed as manslaughter? Surely the use of a vulgar racial epithet by one black man to another in an East Bay ghetto area, or the very generalized “threat” directed at appellant by the victim, who then walked away from appellant, provide no such basis. I am mindful, too, that after the initial two shots were fired half a minute elapsed before appellant fired the second burst of shells into his victim’s inert body.
Judge Golde’s statement that “A kills B. If that is all you know— second degree murder,” and related homely attempts to make intelligible the opaqueness of the standard homicide instructions, could not in my view reasonably divert a juror from a finding of manslaughter on the facts of this case.
I conclude—especially in light of the otherwise unassailably correct and complete homicide instructions—that the instructional error, if any, was harmless within the meaning of both People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243]; California Constitution, article VI, section 13; and Chapman v. California (1976) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065].
A petition for a rehearing, was denied January 20, 1981. Newsom, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied February 18, 1981.

Compare, for example, People v. Lee (1979) 92 Cal.App.3d 707, 714 [155 Cal.Rptr. 128].