Gamino, Cesar Alejandro

Keasler, J.,

filed a dissenting opinion in which Hervey, J., joined.

Whatever else may be expected of a defendant in asking for a self-defense instruction, the defensive evidence must at least posit some criminal act requiring “justification.”1 Today the Court does not explicitly say that “confession and avoidance” no longer applies to self-defense. But its acceptance of Cesar Gamino’s defensive evidence as adequately confession-ary in this context—because, according to the Court, a criminal act may be “implied” from, his version of events2—amounts to the same thing.

A defendant is entitled to a…