Filed 9/9/26 P. v. Murbach CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent, E083887
v. (Super.Ct.No. FVI20002192)
LOUIS JOSEPH MURBACH III, OPINION
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. Michael A. Dauber,
Judge. Affirmed.
Joseph Doyle, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Charles C. Ragland, Chief Assistant Attorney
General, Christopher P. Beesley and Daniel Rogers, Deputy Attorneys General, for
Plaintiff and Respondent.
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After taking methamphetamine, defendant and appellant Louis Joseph Murbach
killed a friend in an abandoned house, dragged his body to an adjacent barn, and set him
and the barn on fire. When interrogated, Murbach stated variously that he and the victim
were playing a game that involved killing one of them, that the victim asked Murbach to
kill him because he was suicidal, that the victim was going to shoot him, and that other
friends had commandeered his body from an astral realm to kill the victim. The sole
issue on appeal is whether the jury should have been instructed on the defense that
Murbach was unconscious when he committed the crime. The trial court ruled that no
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such instruction was warranted, and we affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
On December 20, 2019, Murbach, Rudy T., Kristin C., Joey P. (the victim), and a
fifth friend named Steve were at Murbach’s home in Phelan. Murbach and Joey
“rap[ped] against each other” to see who was better. According to Rudy, Murbach was
“a little sore that he got beat, that he got out rapped.”
Rudy and Kristin were in a relationship and living at Murbach’s home. At around
9 p.m., they left the house. They returned at 3 a.m. and went to their bedroom. Murbach
knocked on their door and said he needed to talk to Rudy.
In the living room, Murbach told Rudy that he killed Joey. When Rudy asked
why, Murbach said that Joey “was trying to take his house from under him.” Murbach
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Undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code.
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said that he stabbed Joey at an abandoned house a couple of miles away, dragged him to
an adjacent barn, put a generator on top of him, and lit him on fire. Kristin entered the
living room, and Murbach repeated that he killed Joey. Kristin and Rudy then packed
their belongings and left. They drove by the abandoned house and saw police and fire
units on the scene. They also saw Joey’s truck. They did not stop to talk to the officers
at the scene. The barn was destroyed by the fire.
Eight months later, Murbach was being held on a psychiatric hold at a San
Bernardino hospital when he asked to speak with the police. Murbach told the police
officer that he killed Joey. When asked why, Murbach said, “Um, I was playing a game
and then it got serious and we just, we just, I just stabbed him.” He continued, saying “I
was not in my right mind” and that “I was listening to what my friend would tell me to do
and I killed, uh, I killed Joey and I didn’t, I didn’t want to, but I did.” He stated that he
and Joey were the only ones there but answered affirmatively when asked whether the
friends in his head were telling him to kill Joey.
During his subsequent interrogation, Murbach stated he had used
methamphetamine that night and gave several different accounts of what happened. First,
when asked where Rudy and Kristin were when Joey was killed, Murbach responded:
“They were at the house, they were, I mean they were, I don’t know how to explain this
um, they um, they come in, oh man I don’t know how to say this, they commandeered my
body by going into the astral realm and then used my body to kill Joey, if that makes any
sense at all.” He stated: “they used their astral bodies, which means their dream bodies,
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to get in mine and Joey’s to play this game.” When asked what the game was, he stated:
“The game is uh, I don’t know exactly like they can get into other people’s bodies and
make them do things. It’s hard to explain. It sounds crazy, but that’s what it is.”
Second, Murbach said he stabbed Joey before Joey could shoot him with a gun:
“the house, we walked in, we hopped the fence, I seen that he had the gun, and I had a
knife in my pocket, and I stabbed him before he could shoot me.” However, moments
earlier, Murbach had stated that Joey never pulled a gun on Murbach: “I drove with Joey,
and we drove over to this uh, this road where, we were, it was an abandoned park, it was
an abandoned area and so we went in and we were going to try to see if there was
anything we could get. But Joey um, Joey, Joey never pulled a gun. I stabbed him and I
tried to hide it, cover it up by putting a gasoline thing on it and lighting it up on top of
him and he um, he died, he died that day.” Later on, he stated again that Joey did not
have a gun.
Third, Murbach said that when he and Joey found a generator they wanted to
retrieve from the abandoned house, Joey asked Murbach to stab him both as part of a
game and because he was suicidal. He began: “We found the generator and then tried to
pull it and that’s when Joey um, put his neck forward twice telling me to stab him, so I
did.” He continued: “Yeah, we played a game, the Joseph Yahweh game to show that I
was God and that he was Joseph Yahweh, and that no matter what even if I killed him, he
would still be there with me as a friend.” When asked how the game was brought up,
Murbach responded: “Well even then, he never brought it up. It wasn’t something that
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we talked about, it was more just something that we kind of did and we were talking to
each other in each other’s heads.” He added that “Joey said that he was tired of living.
He said he was tired of living the way he was and doing the things that he was and if I
would kill him for him, or if I would kill himself for him and I said yeah, I would, I
didn’t want to do it.” Later on, Murbach stated that Joey “wanted to commit suicide, but
he didn’t know how.”
Murbach did not testify at trial. A jury convicted him of murder (§ 187, subd. (a))
and arson (§ 451, subd. (c)), and it found true an allegation that he personally used a knife
in the commission of the murder (§ 12022, subd. (b)(1)). After the trial court found a
number of aggravating factors true, it sentenced Murbach to a five-year determinate
sentence followed by a 25-year indeterminate sentence.
II. DISCUSSION
Murbach’s sole argument on appeal is that the trial court erroneously declined to
instruct the jury on unconsciousness, both in general and because of voluntary
intoxication.
“[W]e begin with the presumption that a person who appears to act in an apparent
state of consciousness is conscious. [Citation.] Therefore, the burden is on a criminal
defendant to produce evidence rebutting this presumption of consciousness. [Citation]
Evidence raising a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant was conscious at the
time of acting is a complete defense to a criminal charge.” (People v. James (2015) 238
Cal.App.4th 794, 804 (James); see also § 26 [“All persons are capable of committing
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crimes except . . . [¶] . . . [¶] Persons who committed the act charged without being
conscious thereof.”].)
“Consistent with this presumption and the burden of proof, if a defendant presents
substantial evidence of unconsciousness, the trial court must provide an instruction to the
jury. [Citation.] Substantial evidence is ‘evidence sufficient for a reasonable jury to find
in favor of the defendant.’ [Citation.] Where a defendant provides evidence of
involuntary unconsciousness, ‘the refusal of a requested instruction on the subject, and its
effect as a complete defense if found to have existed, is prejudicial error. [Citations.]’
[Citation.] ‘The fact that the evidence may not be of a character to inspire belief does not
authorize the refusal of an instruction based thereon. [Citations.] . . . However incredible
the testimony of a defendant may be he is entitled to an instruction based upon the
hypothesis that it is entirely true. [Citations.]’” (James, supra, 238 Cal.App.4th at p.
804.)
“‘“If the state of unconsciousness is caused by voluntary intoxication, however, it
is not a complete defense.” [Citation.]’ [Citation.] It can negate specific intent, but is no
defense to a general intent crime. [Citation.] ‘[C]riminal responsibility in a general
intent crime is justified where a defendant is voluntarily intoxicated to the point of
unconsciousness even though there was no actual intent to commit a crime because a
defendant may not avoid the criminal harm caused by his or her failure to act “with
reason and conscience.”’ [Citation.] [¶] Therefore, if the evidence raises a reasonable
doubt that the defendant was conscious at the time of the alleged criminal conduct,
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unconsciousness is a complete defense to both general and specific intent crimes.
However, if the jury finds the unconsciousness was the result of voluntary intoxication,
then unconsciousness is a defense only to specific intent crimes.” (James, supra, 238
Cal.App.4th at p. 805.)
The trial court did not err, as there was no substantial evidence that Murbach was
unconscious when he killed Joey. In each version of the events he provided, Murbach
indicated that he knew what was occurring as those events were unfolding. In other
words, in all his various retellings, he knew that he was killing Joey while he was doing
it. He points to his statements that Rudy and Kristin had “commandeered” his body from
“the astral realm” as evidence of unconsciousness. However, a belief that someone else
was controlling him does not mean that he lacked awareness of the events as they were
occurring. At most, Murbach’s statements about being commandeered point to his
asserting an irresistible impulse defense, which California does not recognize. (3 Witkin,
Cal. Crim. Law (4th ed. 2012) Defenses § 22 [“In some jurisdictions a defense is allowed
where the defendant is irresistibly compelled to commit the crime. In other words, the
defendant is not deemed criminally responsible, despite knowledge of the wrongfulness
of the act, if he or she is unable to control the impulse to commit it. This defense . . . has
been rejected in California.”].) Unlike here, in the two cases Murbach relies on, there
was substantial evidence that the defendant had no awareness of what was going on at the
time of the crimes. (See James, supra, 238 Cal.App.4th at pp. 809-810; People v. Gana
(2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 598, 602, 609-610.)
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Even if there had been substantial evidence that Murbach was unconscious, there
would still be no reversible error. Murbach does not point to substantial evidence that
any unconsciousness would have been caused by anything other than the voluntary use of
methamphetamine. He mentions in passing in his opening brief that, during his
interrogation, he stated that his psychiatric hold confirmed for him that he had bipolar
schizophrenia, but even then he acknowledged that he had never been diagnosed with that
condition by a medical professional. Moreover, if Murbach was voluntarily intoxicated
with methamphetamine, then there would be no error, as—despite his claim to the
contrary—the trial court in fact instructed the jury on that defense. The jury was
instructed: “You may consider evidence, if any, of the defendant’s voluntary intoxication
only . . . in deciding whether the defendant acted with intent to kill and the defendant
acted with deliberation and premeditation.”
III. DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
RAPHAEL
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J.
We concur:
MILLER
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Acting P. J.
CODRINGTON
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J.
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