The California Supreme Court should grant review of this Court of Appeal opinion. Even if it's right. Whether you're convicted of murder, and thus spend most or all of the rest of your life in prison, should not depend on which particular appellate panel you happen to draw.
The question presented is the required mental state for a murder conviction when you commit an assault. Let's say, as here, you punch someone in the head in a regular old street fight, and they ultimately die as a result. The evidence suggests that you certainly didn't intend to kill them, but nonetheless that you wanted to punch them somewhere on their body where it would hurt a lot, and didn't particularly think (or care) about whether they might perhaps die as a result of your blows. They weren't blows that would normally cause death, but anything's possible, right?
Is that enough for a murder conviction?
The trial court below told the jury, consistent with what the prosecutor told them in their closing argument, that the standard is not that you didn't care whether the person was killed, but rather "the standard for this charge is[,] I don’t care if someone is hurt or killed, arguing that the defendant was guilty because he "didn't care that Anthony Davis [the victim] was hurt. He didn’t care.” That argument almost certainly made the difference in this case; the jury was repeatedly and completely deadlocked before that argument and instruction, and afterwards, it found the defendant guilty.
Is that an accurate statement of the law?
The trial court thought so, and there's a Court of Appeal opinion -- Olivas -- that said exactly that, albeit in dicta and in the context of an out-of-control driver whose conduct fairly clearly satisfied the typical "conscious disregard for human life" established by the California Supreme Court in Knoller. Moreover, the standard set forth in Olivas -- that the prosecution just has to prove that the defendant thought "I know my conduct is dangerous to others, but I don’t care if someone is hurt or killed" -- has been applied by at least a half-dozen other Court of Appeal opinions, albeit again likely in dictum.
Whether that's an accurate statement of the law seems critical to decide uniformly and statewide. There are lots of people who would be guilty of murder if it's enough that they don't care that someone's "hurt" who definitely wouldn't be guilty of murder if the required showing is that they have to not care that someone may be killed by their actions sufficient to demonstrate a "conscious disregard for human life." And murder -- even second-degree murder -- is a sufficiently serious charge that we definitely want to get the standard right, and not convict someone of murder who wouldn't be guilty of that very serious offense in a different appellate division or in front of a different panel in the Court of Appeal.
So this is one of those cases where the California Supreme Court needs to take the case up and decide once and for all what the right rule should be. Because it's a serious charge with serious disagreement and serious consequences for everyone involved.
