In People v. Antonelli, the Supreme Court last week decided yet another case interpreting statutory changes that allow resentencing of defendants who were convicted of murder “under . . . [a] theory under which malice is imputed to a person based solely on that person’s participation in a crime.” (See Senate Bill 1437.) The theory in the case was the provocative act doctrine — the defendant was convicted over 30 years ago based on his role in a home invasion robbery during which one of his accomplices was killed by a victim.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Joshua Groban held the defendant was potentially eligible for resentencing because his conviction came before the Supreme Court made clear in 2009 that provocative-act murder requires the defendant to have personally harbored malice. Pre-2009 case law is contrary to current statutory provisions, the court said, because, under the now obsolete standards, “a jury could have imputed malice to a nonprovocateur defendant.”
The court left for another day the issue whether “defendant himself must have committed, or directly aided and abetted, the provocative act, i.e., [whether] a nonprovocateur can no longer be guilty of provocative act murder.”
The court reversed the published opinion of the Second District, Division Six, Court of Appeal. The Second District, Division One, disagreed with Division Six in People v. Lee (2023) 95 Cal.App.5th 1164. The Supreme Court also disapproved the Division Six opinion in People v. Johnson (2013) 221 Cal.App.4th 623. There was no petition for review in Lee. Review was denied in Johnson.
