People v. Atkins

• Decision Date: 12 March 2001
• Docket Number: No. S082662.,S082662.
• Citation: 18 P.3d 660,25 Cal.4th 76,104 Cal.Rptr.2d 738
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, Robert Nelson ATKINS, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

104 Cal.Rptr.2d 738

25 Cal.4th 76

18 P.3d 660

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, Robert Nelson ATKINS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S082662.

Supreme Court of California.

March 12, 2001.

Victor Blumenkrantz, Berkeley, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson and David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Assistant Attorney General, Mathew Chan, Carlos A. Martinez and Kelly E. LeBel, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Kent S. Scheidegger and Charles L. Hobson, for Criminal Justice Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Plaintiff and Respondent.

CHIN, J.

Is evidence of voluntary intoxication admissible, under Penal Code section 22, on the issue of whether defendant formed the required mental state for arson (Pen.Code, § 451)?¹ We conclude that such evidence is not admissible because arson is a general intent crime. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On September 26, 1997, defendant told his friends that he hated Orville Figgs and was going to burn down Figgs's house.

On the afternoon of September 27, defendant and his brother David drove by Figgs's home on the Ponderosa Sky Ranch. Defendant "flipped the bird" at Figgs as they passed by.

Later that day, around 5:00 p.m., a neighbor saw David drive a white pickup truck into the Ponderosa Sky Ranch canyon, but could not tell if he had a passenger. Around 9:00 p.m., the same neighbor saw the pickup truck drive out of the canyon at a high rate of speed. A half-hour later, a fire was reported. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., Figgs was awakened by a neighbor. Because the fire was rapidly approaching his house, Figgs set up a fire line. The fire came within 150 feet of his house.

At 9:00 or 9:30 p.m., one of defendant's friends saw defendant at David's apartment. He was angrily throwing things around. When asked if defendant was heavily intoxicated, the friend replied, "Yes. Agitated, very agitated."

The county fire marshall, Alan Carlson, responded to the fire around 1:30 a.m. and saw a large fire rapidly spreading in the canyon below the ranch. He described fire conditions on that night as "extreme." Both the weather and the vegetation were particularly dry. The wind was blowing from 12 to 27 miles per hour, with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. The canyon had heavy brush, trees, grass, and steep sloping grades. The fire could not be controlled for three days and burned an area from 2.5 to 2.8 miles long.

The fire marshall traced the origin of the fire to an approximately 10 foot-square area that was completely burned and smelled of "chainsaw mix," a combination of oil and gasoline. A soil sample taken from that area tested positive for gasoline. About 40 feet away, the marshall found defendant's wallet, which was near a recently opened beer can, and tire tracks. He also found a disposable lighter nearby and two more beer cans in other parts of the canyon. All the cans had the same expiration date.

Several days later, defendant spoke with the fire marshall. After waiving his Miranda rights [Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694

), defendant told the marshall that he and his brother had spent much of the day drinking. They then drove in David's white pickup to the Ponderosa Sky Ranch canyon, where they drank some more and stayed between three and one-half to five hours. Defendant saw that the area was in poor condition and decided to burn some of the weeds. His family had once lived there. He pulled out the weeds, placed them in a small pile in a cleared area, retrieved a plastic gasoline jug from David's truck, and from the jug poured "chainsaw mix" on the pile of weeds. Defendant put the jug down a few feet away and lit the pile of weeds with a disposable lighter. The fire quickly spread to the jug and got out of hand. He and David tried to put the fire out, unsuccessfully. They panicked and fled while the jug was still burning. Defendant told the marshal that he meant no harm, claimed the fire was an accident, but admitted that he and his family had hard feelings with the Figgs family.

The marshall testified that the fire had not been started in a cleared area. The area was covered with vegetation, and there was no evidence that the fire started accidentally during a debris burn or that someone had tried to put it out. The marshall opined that the fire was intentionally set.

An information charged defendant with arson of forest land. (§ 451, subd. (c).) The trial court instructed on arson (§ 451, subd. (c))² and on the lesser offenses of arson to property (§ 451, subd. (d)), unlawfully causing a fire of forest land (§ 452, subd. (c)), and misdemeanor (§ 452, subd. (d)) unlawfully causing a fire of property. It described arson and all lesser offenses as general intent crimes and further instructed that voluntary intoxication is not a defense to arson and the lesser crimes and does not relieve defendant of responsibility for the crime. The jury found defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant appealed, arguing that evidence of voluntary intoxication was admissible to show that he lacked the requisite mental state for arson. The Court of Appeal agreed. It reasoned that, as defined in its prior decisions of In re Stonewall F. (1989) 208 Cal.App.3d 1054, 256 Cal.Rptr. 578 (Stonewall F.) and People v. Fabris (1995) 31 Cal.App.4th 685, 37 Cal.Rptr.2d 667 (Fabris), the mens rea for arson is the intent to set fire to or burn or cause to be burned forest land, a specific mental state, as to which voluntary intoxication evidence is admissible under section 22, subdivision (b). The court reversed because the instruction that voluntary intoxication was not a defense to arson "denied defendant the opportunity to prove he lacked the required mental state."

We granted the People's petition for review on the issue of whether evidence of voluntary intoxication is admissible, under section 22, to negate the required mental state for arson.

DISCUSSION

Section 22 provides, as relevant: "(a) No act committed by a person while in a state of voluntary intoxication is less criminal by reason of his or her having been in that condition. Evidence of voluntary intoxication shall not be admitted to negate the capacity to form any mental states for the crimes charged, including, but not limited to, purpose, intent, knowledge, premeditation, deliberation, or malice aforethought, with which the accused committed the act.

"(b) Evidence of voluntary intoxication is admissible solely on the issue of whether or not the defendant actually formed a required specific intent, or, when charged with murder, whether the defendant premeditated, deliberated, or harbored express malice aforethought."

Evidence of voluntary intoxication is inadmissible to negate the existence of general criminal intent. (People v. Whitfield (1994) 7 Cal.4th 437, 448, 27 Cal. Rptr.2d 858, 868 P.2d 272.) In People v. Hood (1969) 1 Cal.3d 444, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370 (Hood), we first addressed the question whether to designate a mental state as a general intent, to prohibit consideration of voluntary intoxication or a specific intent, to permit such consideration. There, we held that intoxication was relevant to negate the existence of a specific intent, but not a general intent, and that assault is a general intent crime for this purpose. (Id. at pp. 455-459, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370.) We stated:

"The distinction between specific and general intent crimes evolved as a judicial response to the problem of the intoxicated offender. That problem is to reconcile two competing theories of what is just in the treatment of those who commit crimes while intoxicated. On the one hand, the moral culpability of a drunken criminal is frequently less than that of a sober person effecting a like injury. On the other hand, it is commonly felt that a person who voluntarily gets drunk and while in that state commits a crime should not escape the consequences. (See Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law (2d ed.1960) p. 537.)

"Before the nineteenth century, the common law refused to give any effect to the fact that an accused committed a crime while intoxicated. The judges were apparently troubled by this rigid traditional rule, however, for there were a number of attempts during the early part of the nineteenth century to arrive at a more humane, yet workable, doctrine. The theory that these judges explored was that evidence of intoxication could be considered to negate intent, whenever intent was an element of the crime charged. As Professor Hall notes, however, such an exculpatory doctrine could eventually have undermined the traditional rule entirely, since some form of mens rea is a requisite of all but strict liability offenses. (Hall, Intoxication and Criminal Responsibility, 57 Harv.L.Rev. 1045, 1049.) To limit the operation of the doctrine and achieve a compromise between the conflicting feelings of sympathy and reprobation for the intoxicated offender, later courts both in England and this country drew a distinction between so-called specific intent and general intent crimes." (Hood, supra, 1 Cal.3d at pp. 455-456, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370, fn. omitted.)

Although we noted in Hood that specific and general intent have been notoriously difficult terms to define and apply, we set forth a general definition distinguishing the two intents: "When the definition of a crime consists of only the description of a particular act, without reference to intent to do a further act or achieve a future consequence, we ask whether the defendant intended to do the proscribed act. This intention is deemed to be a general criminal intent. When the definition refers to defendant's intent to do some further act or achieve some additional consequence, the crime is deemed to be one...