Court Opinion

ID: 9617461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:55:40.543288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:48.369989
License: Public Domain

VOSS,
Judge, concurring in part; dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority’s holding that barring the presence of K.T.’s counsel at a court-ordered mental examination did not violate the juvenile’s constitutional rights. However, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the evidence supports a manslaughter conviction.
As revealed at trial, the victim fell asleep on the living room couch. At that time, K.T. and her sister retrieved a gun, loaded it, and then walked out in the backyard. Upon returning to the living room, K.T. told her sister where to stand when the shooting took place and then pulled the trigger. Afterward, the girls took money and the keys to the van from the victim’s purse and drove off to the store to make some purchases.
Arizona Revised Statutes Annotated section 13-1103 provides that “[a] person commits manslaughter by: Committing second degree murder ... upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion resulting from adequate provocation by the victim.” The majority concedes that a sudden quarrel was not involved in the shooting, but contends that there was sufficient evidence that the shooting resulted from a heat of passion due to adequate provocation from the victim. An analogous argument was presented and rejected in Reid, 155 Ariz. 399, 747 P.2d 560. In Reid, a daughter that was subjected to over twelve years of sexual, psychological, and physical abuse, shot her father in the head as he slept. The daughter’s defense centered around his abuse and violent psychotic acts that caused her to fear for her life. An expert witness testified that the daughter’s personality disorder compelled her to stay with her father and to believe that the only way out was to kill him. On appeal, the supreme court rejected the defendant’s argument that the manslaughter instruction should have been given. The court found the evidence insufficient to support a finding that the killing occurred “upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion resulting from adequate provocation by the victim.” A.R.S. § 13-1103(A)(2). The court found:
Whatever might have occurred before the victim retired for the evening is immaterial because the defendant waited two and a half hours before shooting him. The evidence presented no sudden quarrel between the victim and the accused. Neither was there any evidence that the victim provoked the accused. From testimony at trial, evidence was insufficient to indicate that the killing occurred in the heat of passion or immediately after a quarrel.
*66Reid, 155 Ariz. at 401, 747 P.2d at 562. The court focused on the two and one-half hours lapse of time between the fight with his daughter and the subsequent shooting.
Here, the majority concedes that there was a similar lapse of time between the fight and the ultimate shooting; however they contend that because K.T. was a victim of battered child syndrome, she was in a constant heat of passion. The majority argues that K.T. lived in a constant state of fear, believing- that shooting her mother was her only option to protect herself and her sister.
As in Reid, there was no evidence presented at trial that the shooting occurred upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion. K.T. shot her mother as her mother slept after a lapse of time or “cooling off period” which would negate any heat of passion or sudden quarrel. To adopt the majority’s position commissions the manslaughter instruction to any defendant claiming abuse.
Because the evidence does not support the finding that K.T. shot her mother in a heat of passion, the court erred in convicting K.T. of manslaughter.