People v. Blakeley

• Citation: 999 P.2d 675,23 Cal.4th 82,96 Cal.Rptr.2d 451
• Decision Date: 02 June 2000
• Docket Number: No. S062453.,S062453.
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. George John BLAKELEY, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)

96 Cal.Rptr.2d 451

23 Cal.4th 82

999 P.2d 675

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. George John BLAKELEY, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S062453.

Supreme Court of California.

June 2, 2000.

Rehearing Denied July 26, 2000.

Carol Strickman, Oakland, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Ronald A. Bass, Assistant Attorney General, Joan Killeen and Raymond A. Cardozo, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

KENNARD, J.

In the companion case of People v. Lasko (2000) 23 Cal.4th 101, 96 Cal. Rptr.2d 441, 999 P.2d 666, we hold that a defendant who, with conscious disregard for life and the knowledge that such conduct endangers the life of another, unintentionally but unlawfully kills in a sudden quarrel or the heat of passion is guilty only of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder. Here, we hold in a case of first impression that voluntary manslaughter is also committed when a defendant, acting with conscious disregard for life and the knowledge that the conduct is life-endangering, unintentionally but unlawfully kills while having an unreasonable but good faith belief in the need to act in self-defense.

I

On October 25, 1994, defendant George John Blakeley and his friend, David Fraire, spent the early afternoon drinking brandy in a park in Vallejo, California. They then went to defendant's home. Also there were Steven Blakeley (defendant's brother), Tony Santiago, and Lionel Vallo (a friend of Santiago's). Fraire passed around bottles of beer, and Vallo bought $20 worth of methamphetamine from defendant.

Vallo, who had been drinking, asked about the quality of the methamphetamine, saying that some methamphetamine he had recently bought from Santiago had been "bunk." Santiago told Vallo, "fuck you," and Vallo replied, "fuck you." Defendant said to both Santiago and Vallo, "shut the fuck up"; Vallo told defendant, "you shut the fuck up."

Defendant told Vallo to leave the house. Vallo, who was six feet tall and weighed 205 pounds, swung a beer bottle at defendant, who was five feet five inches tall and weighed 140 pounds, but missed. Defendant then hit Vallo in the head with an unopened bottle of beer. The bottle shattered, cutting Vallo's cheek. After throwing a beer bottle at defendant, but missing him, Vallo charged at defendant. Defendant drew a large knife from a sheath on his belt and a struggle ensued. Santiago pulled Vallo off defendant. Vallo was bleeding heavily from a stab wound to the chest. Fraire told defendant "let's go," and defendant, weeping, drove Fraire home.

After telling his friend Vallo, "You dying, ain't nothing I could do, you got it to the heart," Santiago asked Steven Blakeley (who had been out of the room during the fight) to "call 911" and then left. The police and paramedics soon arrived but were unable to save Vallo, who died shortly thereafter from a single stab wound to the heart. Defendant fled, eventually turning up at his uncle's home in San Bernardino. His uncle called the police.

At trial, eyewitness accounts of the stabbing differed. Vallo's friend Santiago testified defendant had made a motion "like an uppercut" with the knife as Vallo charged him, and Vallo almost immediately went limp, falling on top of defendant. Fraire, defendant's friend, testified that after Vallo attacked defendant the two struggled for "half a minute or so"; he did not see defendant stab Vallo. Defendant, who testified on his own behalf, claimed he drew his knife to defend himself when Vallo charged him, that the two of them fought and went down on the floor, and that Vallo apparently impaled himself on the knife during the struggle. He did not realize Vallo had been stabbed until after the fight was over.

The trial court instructed the jury on the charged crime of murder as well as the lesser included offenses of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. As to voluntary manslaughter, the trial court explained: "Every person who unlawfully kills another human being without malice aforethought but with an intent to kill is guilty of voluntary manslaughter.... There is no malice aforethought if the killing occurred in the honest but unreasonable belief in the necessity to defend oneself against imminent peril to life or great bodily injury." (Italics added.) The court refused to give defendant's requested instruction that a killing is involuntary manslaughter when the killer, acting in an unreasonable but good faith belief in the necessity of self-defense, unintentionally causes the victim's death.¹ Instead, the court gave the jury CALJIC No. 8.45, the standard instruction on involuntary manslaughter.² The jury convicted defendant of voluntary manslaughter.

The Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction. The court reasoned: "[Unreasonable self-defense] has no special bearing on the crime of involuntary manslaughter. It neither allows a conviction of this crime, nor prevents one." Because "[t]here was no instruction ... that prevented the jury from considering involuntary manslaughter," the Court of Appeal said, the trial court did not have to give defendant's requested instruction. We granted review.

II

As we did in the companion case of People v. Lasko, supra, 23 Cal.4th 101, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 999 P.2d 666, we begin our analysis by exploring the differences between murder and the lesser offense of manslaughter. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. (Pen.Code, § 187, subd. (a).)³ Malice may be either express or implied. It is express when the defendant manifests "a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature." (§ 188.) It is implied "when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart." (Ibid.) This statutory definition of implied malice, we have said, "has never proved of much assistance in defining the concept in concrete terms" (People v. Dellinger (1989) 49 Cal.3d 1212, 1217, 264 Cal.Rptr. 841, 783 P.2d 200), and juries should be instructed that malice is implied "when the killing results from an intentional act, the natural consequences of which are dangerous to life, which act was deliberately performed by a person who knows that his conduct endangers the life of another and who acts with conscious disregard for life" (id. at p. 1215, 264 Cal.Rptr. 841, 783 P.2d 200). As in the companion case of People v. Lasko, for convenience we shall describe this mental state as "conscious disregard for life."

Manslaughter is "the unlawful killing of a human being without malice." (§ 192.) A defendant lacks malice and is guilty of voluntary manslaughter in "limited, explicitly defined circumstances: either when the defendant acts in a `sudden quarrel or heat of passion' (§ 192, subd. (a)), or when the defendant kills in `unreasonable self-defense' — the unreasonable but good faith belief in having to act in self-defense (see In re Christian S. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 768 [30 Cal.Rptr.2d 33, 872 P.2d 574]; People v. Flannel [(1979)] 25 Cal.3d 668 [160 Cal.Rptr. 84, 603 P.2d 1])." (People v. Barton (1995) 12 Cal.4th 186, 199, 47 Cal. Rptr.2d 569, 906 P.2d 531.) At issue here is the second type of voluntary manslaughter: when a defendant kills in unreasonable self-defense. (The other form of voluntary manslaughter — when the defendant kills in a sudden quarrel or heat of passion — is addressed in the companion case of People v. Lasko, supra, 23 Cal.4th 101, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d 441, 999 P.2d 666.)

A person who intentionally kills in unreasonable self-defense lacks malice and is guilty only of voluntary manslaughter, not murder. (People v. Barton, supra, 12 Cal.4th at p. 199, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 569, 906 P.2d 531; see also People v. Breverman (1998) 19 Cal.4th 142, 154, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094; People v. Saille (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1103, 1107, fn. 1, 2 Cal.Rptr.2d 364, 820 P.2d 588; People v. Flannel, supra, 25 Cal.3d 668, 160 Cal.Rptr. 84, 603 P.2d 1.) But what offense is committed when a person, acting with a conscious disregard for life, unintentionally kills a human being, but the killing occurs in unreasonable self-defense? Is the killer guilty of murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter?

We have in the past said that in these circumstances the killer is not guilty of murder: "[I]mplied malice is shown when `the defendant for a base, antisocial motive and with wanton disregard for human life, does an act that involves a high degree of probability that it will result in death.' ... A defendant who acts with the requisite actual belief in the necessity for self-defense does not act with the base motive required for implied malice, i.e., with `an abandoned and malignant heart.' [Citation.] A contrary conclusion, namely, that imperfect self-defense applies only in cases of express, but not implied, malice would lead to a totally anomalous and absurd result, in which a defendant, who unreasonably believes that his life is in imminent danger, would be guilty only of manslaughter if he acts with the intent to kill his perceived assailant, but would be guilty of murder if he does not intend to kill, but only to seriously injure, the assailant. There is no authority to support such an incongruous rule." (In re Christian S., supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 780, fn. 4, 30 Cal. Rptr.2d 33, 872 P.2d 574, some italics omitted.)

Defendant here asserts that one who unintentionally and unlawfully kills in unreasonable self-defense is guilty only of involuntary manslaughter. We have never before decided whether in these circumstances a defendant is guilty of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. As we shall explain, we conclude that when a defendant, acting with conscious disregard for life, unintentionally kills in unreasonable self-defense, the killing is voluntary, not involuntary, manslaughter.

Defendant's...