This has to do with what has to be shown by the prosecution and the defense as it relates to a jury trial in a murder case, particularly in Los Angeles County, where a lot of murder cases are prosecuted. Specific rules have to be abided by if you want to try to argue as a defense attorney that the crime in your particular case was a justifiable homicide or there was some excuse for the homicide.
The jury instruction and the law that applies to that state in no uncertain terms that, upon a trial of a charge of Penal Code 187 murder, the killer is lawful if it was justified or excusable. The burden is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the homicide was unlawful and that it is not justified or excused.
If you have a reasonable doubt that the homicide was unlawful, you must find the defendant not guilty. This is what is read to juries, assuming that the defense can put in some evidence showing that the killing was a lawful killing — that it was justified or that it was excusable.
Whether they were defending another person or themselves, whether the person was in the process of committing some horrible felony and that person was trying to stop them from doing that under the circumstances, was acting reasonably.
So, the prosecutors always have the burden when it comes to proving a criminal case and the charge, and if they can't prove that a killing — if they're going to charge a murder charge — was unlawful and not excused. They won't be able to prove the person guilty, and the jury will find the person not guilty.
So, the prosecution is burdened to prove every charge in the complaint or information in Los Angeles County.
Self-Defense or Defense of Others
On the flip side, if the defense is going to assert self-defense or defense of others or some other justifiable homicide claim, to get the jury instruction to back that up — in other words, to get the law to back that up, the defense is going to have to put on evidence that supports that.
You can't just pull it out of your hat and make the argument without any evidence to back it up, or the judge will not give that jury instruction. So, you must either get it out from one of the witnesses or have your client take the witness stand.
There are all sorts of ways to get the evidence that it was a self-defense, a defense of others — it was a justifiable homicide because of the circumstance the person found them in. So, if you can get the facts out there, then you, as a defense attorney, ask the judge, listen, I got this fact.
I've got in an argument that it was self-defense, and if the jury believes these facts that were put into evidence, then my client can be found not-guilty because it would be a justifiable homicide because they were acting in self-defense at the time, or they were trying to defend some other person, they were acting reasonably, and therefore, they should not be found guilty of murder.
So, this is where if the judge refused to give this particular jury instruction, appeals are granted, and the appellate court says you needed to provide the jury with this instruction because they needed some law to latch onto to be able to find the person not guilty.
Even if the trial court doesn't believe the testimony or doesn't like it, if the testimony is there and the jury could feel it — who's the finder of fact in the case — then it doesn't matter. You still have to instruct them on the particular law that applies to the case.
Defense Argument: Killing was Lawful
This is where battles are being had all the time. If I put on a defense in a murder case in one of the Los Angeles courts and I see that I can get a jury instruction that will support my defense — in other words, I can say to the jury, look, this is what the evidence was in the case.
You saw that there was evidence that my client was trying to defend himself at the time this killing took place and look, there's a jury instruction that matches up with what he was doing. So, if you believe that he was defending himself at the time, the law says that if you kill somebody. It was under reasonable circumstances in defending himself, then that killing was lawful, and the prosecutors cannot prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
So, when you do these murder trials, that's why, in my opinion, it's so crucial that you get a criminal defense lawyer who's handled these types of cases before in the particular Los Angeles courtroom where your case is pending because they're going to know how to pick a jury.
They're going to know how to present the evidence. They'll know how to cross-examine the witnesses in the case, and lastly, they'll learn how to argue to convince the jury of your position. In these close murder cases, the people who win are often better prepared, make better arguments, and convince the jury that their position is correct.
