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.”
