P. v. Martinez
This gang confrontation and shooting case raises a single issue, centered on whether the trial court had a sua sponte duty to instruct the jury based on a recondite statement in People v. Garcia (2008) 162 Cal.App.4th 18, 31, that “an unlawful killing during the commission of an inherently dangerous felony, even if unintentional, is at least voluntary manslaughter.†(Italics added; see also id. at p. 22 [same statement in introduction of opinion].)
The answer is no. Whatever mysteries are inherent in Garcia’s “at least†comment, they have no application to the case before us. Garcia was a highly unusual case in which a gun was not used as a gun, but as a blunt instrument: the victim was hit in the face with its butt, fell to the sidewalk and died of head trauma. The Garcia court affirmed the conviction as against the defendant’s argument that he was entitled to instructions on involuntary manslaughter, but its task was made difficult by the semantic anomaly that the use of the butt of a gun as a blunt instrument made the crime, literally, an “assault . . . with a firearm,†hence an “inherently dangerous felony.†(Garcia, supra, 162 Cal.App.4th at p. 22.) This case, by contrast, presents a semantically clean set of facts: Martinez fired into a crowd. His attorney argued he was acting rashly because of the heat of passion given a sudden quarrel (the crowd was group of rival gang members intent on doing him harm), and therefore could be convicted only of voluntary manslaughter. But the jury found him guilty of second degree murder. We affirm. These facts present no Garcia issue and therefore required no Garcia instruction.
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