What kind of provocation
will suffice to constitute heat of passion and reduce a murder charge to
manslaughter in California? This is the
question the Supreme Court of California answered on June 3, 2013, in People v. Beltran. The
government argued that the provocation must be of the sort that would cause an
ordinary person of average disposition to kill. However, the court rejected this argument,
relying on the same rationale it adopted nearly one hundred years ago in People v. Logan[1].
The court held that provocation into the
heat of passion is sufficient to constitute manslaughter only when an ordinary
person of average disposition “would be induced to react
from passion and not from judgment.”
Tare Beltran and Claire Tempongko
began dating in 1998. Shortly thereafter, Beltran moved into the San Francisco
apartment in which Tempongko lived with her nine-year-old son and younger
daughter. Between this time and
September 2000, Beltran and Tempongko tried to get pregnant, but Beltran
believed they were unsuccessful. Also
during this time, there were several instances of domestic violence, which
resulted in Tempongko ending the relationship and obtaining a restraining order
against Beltran.
Shortly thereafter,
Tempongko began dating another man. On
October 22, 2000, Tempongko was shopping with her children and new boyfriend
when Beltran called. After the call,
Tempongko became upset and subsequently continued to receive calls from Beltran
on her way home. Tempongko became
nervous about returning home as she planned, and when she neared her apartment,
she saw a green Honda parked outside. Tempongko
then instructed her boyfriend to circle the block a few times. When the Honda finally left, Tempongko went
inside her apartment. Concerned for her
safety, Tempongko’s boyfriend called several times but could not reach her, so
he drove back to the apartment where he saw a man running across the street. Later that day, a neighbor learned from
Tempongko’s son that Beltran had killed Tempongko in her apartment. Tempongko had been stabbed multiple times in
the upper body, arms, hands, and face. Six
years later Beltran was found and arrested in Mexico.
Tempongko’s son contends
that Beltran broke into Tempongko’s apartment, began yelling and questioning
Tempongko about where she had been, then walked to the kitchen, retrieved a
knife, and stabbed Tempongko as she tried to defend herself.
Beltran, on the other hand,
testified that he and Tempongko were scheduled to have lunch that day but
instead Tempongko went shopping. That
evening, he went to Tempongko’s apartment and let himself in with a key because
Tempongko was expecting him. Tempongko then
became upset because Beltran was late and began yelling insults at him. When Beltran was leaving, Tempongko provoked
Beltran by telling him that she had aborted their child. Beltran was shocked because Tempongko had
never mentioned an abortion before. Beltran
claims this revelation was so disturbing that he acted rashly, not from
reflection, but in reaction to the provocation.
Consequently, Beltran was thrust into the heat of passion, and the next
thing he remembers is standing in the living room with a bloody knife. At trial, the jury was left to determine
whether they would convict Beltran of first or second degree murder, or
voluntary manslaughter.
The United States’ justice
system is premised on community moral condemnation. Crimes that offend the community’s moral
standards are punished. However, the
punishment for different crimes varies based on the culpability of the defendant’s
mental state, and the severity of the crime relative to community standards. Generally, the more culpable an individual’s mental
state, the more severely the crime is punished. Accordingly, first degree murder is generally
punished more severely than second degree murder, and second degree murder more
severely than manslaughter.
Murder is the unlawful
killing of a human being with malice aforethought. At common law, malice aforethought is any
mental state sufficient for murder. It
can be the intent to kill another human being, intent to inflict grievous
bodily harm on another, or, in what is known as depraved heart murder, extreme
reckless disregard for human life.
Voluntary manslaughter, on
the other hand, does not require malice aforethought. Voluntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing
of a human being without malice, upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion. Heat of passion would reduce an unlawful
killing from murder to manslaughter. But
if sufficient time has elapsed between the provocation into the sudden heat of
passion and the fatal blow, in which a reasonable person would have cooled off,
the killing is not voluntary manslaughter. In Beltran, the court asserted that heat
of passion “is a state of mind caused by legally sufficient provocation that
causes a person to act, not out of rational thought but out of unconsidered
reaction to the provocation.” Because
manslaughter recognizes a fallible human characteristic, and is not committed
out of malice, unlike murder, it is punished less severely. But what provocation is legally sufficient in
California to constitute a killing in the heat of passion, and thus reduce a
charge of murder to manslaughter?
In Beltran, the
government argues that provocation must be of a kind that would cause an
ordinary person of average disposition to kill. If an ordinary person would kill under the
circumstances, then a jury may find manslaughter, instead of murder. However, the defense claims that in order to
assess adequate provocation, the question is whether the average person would
react by mentally experiencing clouded reason, precluding the formation of
malice, not whether the average person would react physically, by killing.
The
Supreme Court of California declined to adopt the test proposed by the
government, and reaffirmed the standard for determining heat of passion that it
adopted nearly a century ago in Logan.
It reasoned that accepting a standard that requires provocation such that the
ordinary person of average disposition would be moved to kill overlooks the
real issue. With the delineation between
voluntary manslaughter and murder, the focus should be directed towards the
defendant’s state of mind, not on the defendant’s actions. The court added that the basic inquiry should
be whether the defendant’s reason, at the time of the killing, was so obscured
by passion, that an ordinary “person of average disposition would be induced to
react from passion and not from judgment.” Provocation is therefore not measured by
whether the average person would act by killing; rather, it is measured by the
effect the provocation would have on the average person’s state of mind, and
specifically, whether the provocation would cause an average person to act
rashly.
Jared Engelking
Blogger, Criminal Law
Brief
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