Court Opinion

ID: 9712574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:56:35.037736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:13.154363
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE GREEN, specially concurring: I disagree with the determination of the majority that defendant’s firing of a gun twice in the air while warning the advancing crowd to stay back constituted aggression and thus a foundation for the giving of IPI Criminal No. 24.09. I deem the evidence of defendant’s challenge to others to fight, however, to be sufficient evidence to justify the giving of the instruction. IPI Criminal No. 24 is patterned after section 7—4 of the Criminal Code (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 7—4). Although mere words are not sufficient provocation to reduce a homicide to manslaughter (Matthews), the comments of the committee that drafted section 7—4 indicated that mere words are sufficient to render one who later kills another to be an aggressor. Those comments as revised by Professor Charles H. Bowman state in part: “However, if he voluntarily engages in a fight or in some other manner, by words or actions, provokes the use of force against himself which apparently will not involve the use of deadly force, but unexpectedly is threatened with deadly force, he has a qualified right to protect himself by using deadly force; first, he must use any method which is reasonably available to him, to avoid the use of such force—‘retreat to the wall,’ as the qualification sometimes is expressed. [Citations.]” (Emphasis added.) Ill. Ann. Stat., ch. 38, par. 7—4, Committee Comments—1961, at 408-09 (Smith-Hurd 1972).