People v. Rios

Opinion

BAXTER, J.

—On retrial after a prior acquittal of murder, defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for a homicide the jury found to be both unlawful (i.e., neither justified nor excused) and intentional. Defendant asserts, among other things, that the voluntary manslaughter instructions *454were prejudicially incomplete because they omitted the voluntary manslaughter “elements” that the killing must have occurred in a heat of passion upon sufficient provocation (hereafter heat of passion or provocation), or in the actual but unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense…