Sufficiency of the evidence of malice to support defendant’s second-degree murder conviction; People v. Smith; Malice; People v. Aaron; People v. Carines; Voluntary manslaughter; People v. Reese; Provocation; People v. Tierney; People v. Parney; People v. Mendoza

The court held that there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable trier of fact to find defendant guilty of second-degree murder. The jury was entitled to find that he was not subjected to the kind of reasonable provocation that would negate a finding of malice. The court observed that he presented no evidence suggesting that he was subjected to reasonable provocation that prompted him to kill the victim (his girlfriend) in the heat of passion. According to L (defendant’s father), defendant and the victim had a troubled relationship. According to L’s “testimony about defendant’s confession, defendant drove into a vacant parking garage at the end of a dead end street and killed the victim because the two had an argument. Defendant told [L] that he ‘was tired of [the victim] arguing and screaming at him.’” L also testified that “defendant and the victim had been dating for over a year, and that defendant told [L] that he was ‘depressed.’” The jury was instructed that it could find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and it declined to do so; by necessary implication, it found that he had not been reasonably provoked. The court held that the “jury’s finding was proper;” the court concluded that no reasonable jury could have found this “provocation sufficient to cause a reasonable person to lose control.” Thus, the evidence did not support a conviction of voluntary manslaughter. In contrast, the evidence “was sufficient for the jury to infer that defendant killed the victim with malice. The victim died of inflicted blunt force trauma, and sustained the vast majority of her injuries to her head, with multiple lacerations on her forehead, chin, and the back of her head. She also sustained contusions below her eyes, on her nose, and on her chin. The blunt force trauma was so severe that the victim’s skull was exposed, and fragments of brain matter protruded from her injuries.” Further, her “injuries distorted her face to the point where her face became nonsymmetrical. The police were compelled to broadcast descriptive information about” her and her clothing on the news because the injuries made her “unrecognizable.” The extent of her “injuries could not possibly have been accidental or unknowing, and thus at a minimum overwhelmingly imply that they were inflicted with the intent to cause great bodily injury.” The jury was permitted to draw reasonable inferences. Affirmed.