Honest but Unreasonable Belief

Honest but Unreasonable Belief

The all-or-nothing baseline leaves one defendant in an awkward position: the person whose fear was genuine but whose reading of the situation fell short of what a reasonable person would have made of it. The rule that handles this defendant is short. When a defendant intentionally kills because he honestly believes that deadly force is necessary to prevent death or grievous bodily harm, and that belief is unreasonable, the killing is not justified, so perfect self-defense fails. In a jurisdiction that recognizes the doctrine, however, the honest belief mitigates what would otherwise be murder, and the defendant is guilty of voluntary manslaughter.¹ The primary statement of the rule confines it to some jurisdictions, and a later section of this chapter covers where the doctrine is accepted and where it is refused. This section assumes a jurisdiction that accepts it, so that attention can stay on the belief itself.

The belief has two features, and each does separate work. Its unreasonableness explains why the killing remains unlawful. Complete self-defense requires that the belief in danger and in the need for deadly force be reasonable², so a belief that a reasonable person in the defendant's position would not have shared cannot make the killing a justified one.³ Its honesty explains why the killing is nonetheless not murder. The defendant killed because he sincerely thought he had to, which is a very different mental state from the callous or vengeful one that murder punishes, and the law therefore treats the honest belief as negating malice. An unlawful intentional killing that lacks malice is voluntary manslaughter.⁴ The California Supreme Court reasoned the same way in People v. McCoy: a person who kills in the unreasonable but good-faith belief that self-defense is necessary acts without what would otherwise be malice, and is guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder.⁵ The result also gives the jury a verdict that fits the defendant's blameworthiness, which a forced choice between acquittal and murder cannot do for someone who was wrong but sincere.

Keeping the two features apart prevents the most common confusion in this area. Honesty is a question about what the defendant actually believed, and it is answered by looking into the defendant's own mind. Reasonableness is a question about what a reasonable person in her position would have believed, and it is answered by measuring her perception against an outside standard. The complete defense demands that both be satisfied, while imperfect self-defense demands only the first and tolerates failure of the second. That arrangement matches the standard definition of the doctrine, which describes an honest but unreasonable mistake that force is necessary to repel an attack.⁶ On an exam, the usual error is to let obvious terror end the analysis. Evidence of terror goes to honesty, and honesty earns the mitigation, but sincere fear alone never produces an acquittal.

In practice, step three is usually the contested one. Once a jury has found the belief unreasonable, the remaining dispute is whether the defendant truly held it. The standard citation for this branch of the doctrine is Shuck v. State, a 1975 Maryland appellate decision cited for the defendant who honestly but unreasonably believes deadly force is necessary to prevent death or grievous bodily harm.⁷ The two scenes below are invented, and they show the steps working on facts that differ by a single variable.

Because the honesty step looks into the defendant's own mind, the proof consists of what the defendant perceived and how the defendant reacted, and a jury may ask how far-fetched the claimed fear was in deciding whether it was real. The later section on raising the claim at trial takes up what the defendant must put into evidence. One variation belongs here, though. A defendant whose misperception came from voluntary intoxication may sincerely hold a belief that a sober person would not, and some jurisdictions respond by disallowing evidence of voluntary intoxication when it is offered to establish the honest belief that imperfect self-defense requires.⁸

The honest belief can be mistaken about either of two things. The defendant may wrongly believe that she is in danger of death or grievous bodily harm at all, as in the parking-lot scene. Or she may be right that an attack is under way and wrong that deadly force was needed to stop it, so that the error lies in the amount of force.⁹ Both mistakes defeat the reasonableness requirement of the complete defense, and both leave the honest belief intact, so both support the same reduction.

One limit keeps the doctrine in its place: it belongs to homicide law. Its function is to reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter, so it applies when the person claiming self-defense has killed the attacker.¹⁰ Outside homicide the concept does not exist. For other crimes the defendant is either guilty or not guilty, and no in-between offense is available to which an honest but unreasonable fear could reduce the charge.¹¹ California extends the reasoning to an attempted killing, treating the defendant as guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter rather than attempted murder, but that extension still sits inside the murder-and-manslaughter family.¹²

With the rule, the two features of the belief, and the homicide limit in place, the remaining question is why the law lands this killing at manslaughter rather than somewhere else. The next section answers it by returning to malice aforethought.