United States Ninth Circuit

The district court's denial of a habeas corpus petition challenging petitioner's second degree murder conviction based on an alleged error in the jury instruction on self-defense, is reversed and remanded, where: 1) the trial court gave an inaccurate jury instruction that an honest but "reasonable" (instead of "unreasonable") belief in the necessity for self-defense does not negate malice and does not reduce the offense from murder to manslaughter; 2) this error was not harmless.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/30/2014
• Published 04/30/2014

Judges

• PER CURIAM

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel