Court’s failure to explain imperfect self defense jury instruction requires reversal of murder conviction

People v. Brim (Cal. Ct. App., June 17, 2026, No. A170747) 2026 WL 1746369, at *1

Summary: Brim boarded a BART train and got into fight with another passenger, Williams, during it Williams drew a knife and attempted to stab Brim. Brim gained control of the knife, fatally stabbed Williams in the head and neck, and ran from the train. The fight was captured on two BART surveillance cameras.

Brim was charged with murder and tried by jury, where he testified that he had acted in self-defense. The jury found him guilty of second degree murder and he was later sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. Brim asserted that the trial court erred in: instructing the jury with CALCRIM No. 3474 regarding the right to self-defense, and in responding to the jury’s question about that instruction during its deliberations. The Court of Appeal held that the trial court prejudicially erred in responding to the jury’s question regarding CALCRIM No. 3474, and reversed Brim’s murder conviction. The Court also concluded that there was substantial evidence to support that conviction, so People may retry Brim for murder. If they elect not to do so, the Court directed that the judgment be modified to reflect a conviction for voluntary manslaughter.

CALCRIM No. 3474, found  within a section titled, “Self-Defense and Defense of Another,” provides: “The right to use force in self-defense continues only as long as the danger exists or reasonably appears to exist. When the attacker no longer appears capable of inflicting any injury, then the right to use force ends.”

Brim argued that because CALCRIM No. 3474 tells jurors that a defendant’s “right to use force in self-defense” ends when the danger no longer “reasonably appears to exist,” it is unclear that this limitation applies only to perfect self-defense, but not to imperfect self-defense. He argues that the trial court erred when it “refused to give a simple and straightforward answer” (i.e., “yes”) to the jury’s question as to whether it could rely on imperfect self-defense even if the right to use perfect self-defense had ceased under this instruction. The Court agreed.

The Law of Imperfect Self-Defense

People v. Sotelo-Urena (2016) 4 Cal.App.5th 732, 744, 209 Cal.Rptr.3d 259 explained that: “A homicide is considered justified as self-defense where the defendant actually and reasonably believed the use of deadly force was necessary to defend himself from imminent threat of death or great bodily injury. Under such circumstances, the killing is not a crime. (People v. Elmore (2014) 59 Cal.4th 121, 133–134, 172 Cal.Rptr.3d 413, 325 P.3d 951; § 197; 1 Witkin & Epstein, Cal. Criminal Law (4th ed. 2012) Defenses, § 67 et seq., p. 507 et seq.) Where the defendant kills while actually but unreasonably believing the use of deadly force was necessary, defendant is considered to have acted in imperfect self-defense. Imperfect self-defense is not a complete defense to a killing, but negates the malice element and reduces the offense to voluntary manslaughter. The California Supreme Court summarized in People v. Humphrey (1996) 13 Cal.4th 1073, 1082, 56 Cal.Rptr.2d 142, 921 P.2d 1: ‘For killing to be in self-defense, the defendant must actually and reasonably believe in the need to defend.  If the belief subjectively exists but is objectively unreasonable, there is “imperfect self-defense,” i.e., “the defendant is deemed to have acted without malice and cannot be convicted of murder,” but can be convicted of manslaughter. To constitute “perfect self-defense,” i.e., to exonerate the person completely, the belief must also be objectively reasonable.”

If a defendant testifies that he acted in self-defense, the absence of perfect or imperfect self-defense is an element of the crime, and the prosecution must prove such absence beyond a reasonable doubt. (See § 197; People v. Morales (2021) 69 Cal.App.5th 978, 988, 284 Cal.Rptr.3d 693; CALCRIM No. 505; CALCRIM No. 571.)

“Because malice is absent when imperfect self-defense is present, the prosecution cannot prove malice without disproving imperfect self-defense.” (People v. Schuller (2023) 15 Cal.5th 237, 254–255, 311 Cal.Rptr.3d 830, 533 P.3d 908 (Schuller).)

The Trial Court’s Duty to Clear Up Jury Confusion

“The court has a primary duty to help the jury understand the legal principles it is asked to apply.” (People v. Beardslee (1991) 53 Cal.3d 68, 97, 97, 279 Cal.Rptr. 276, 806 P.2d 1311 (Beardslee).) And under section 1138, if a deliberating jury “desire[s] to be informed on any point of law arising in the case … the information required must be given.” A Court reviews for an abuse of discretion the trial court’s determination how best to answer a jury’s question under section 1138.

Abuse of discretion has at least two components: a factual component … and a legal component.  “The discretion intended, however, is not a capricious or arbitrary discretion, but an impartial discretion, guided and controlled in its exercise by fixed legal principles. It is not a mental discretion, to be exercised ex gratia, but a legal discretion, to be exercised in conformity with the spirit of the law and in a manner to subserve and not to impede or defeat the ends of substantial justice….” ’ ” (People v. Jacobs (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 728, 736–738, 67 Cal.Rptr.3d 615.)

That legal component was abused here.

The Trial Court Abused Its Discretion In Responding to the Jury’s Third Question

The jury’s third question was, “If the right to self-defense ends as stated on [CALCRIM No.] 3474 when the danger no longer exists, can Voluntary Manslaughter-Imperfect Self-Defense theory continue past that point?”

CALCRIM No. 3474 was a stand-alone instruction that referred only to the right to “self-defense.” (See CALCRIM No. 571 [“complete” and “imperfect” self-defense]; CALCRIM No. 505 [“lawful” self-defense].) And if the jury misunderstood the “right to self-defense” in CALCRIM No. 3474 to encompass both perfect and imperfect self-defense, there was a direct contradiction between the objective standard there described (“as long as the danger exists or reasonably appears to exist”) and the subjective standard of CALCRIM No. 571, requiring only that the defendant “actually believe[d]” the use of deadly force was necessary to avoid imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.

The answer to the jury’s question was “Yes.” This is because there is no “right” to kill in imperfect self-defense; instead, a defendant who does so has killed unlawfully and is guilty of voluntary manslaughter. (See Schuller, supra, 15 Cal.5th at p. 252, 311 Cal.Rptr.3d 830, 533 P.3d 908.) By responding to the jury’s question by simply directing it—for the third time—to refer to CALCRIM No. 571, the trial court did nothing to clear up the instructional confusion the jury had expressed. The jury’s question was about how to harmonize two seemingly conflicting instructions, simply directing the jury to refer back to one of those instructions failed to fulfill the trial court’s obligation under section 1138 to clear up the jury’s instructional confusion.

Although the trial court’s response was a technically correct statement of the law, and its hesitation to go further quite understandable, the jury did not understand the instructions.

The Error Was Prejudicial

A violation of section 1138 due to the trial court’s failure to adequately answer a jury’s question is subject to the prejudice standard of People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836, 299 P.2d 243 (Watson) and requires evaluating whether the defendant has demonstrated that it is “reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the [defendant] would have been reached in the absence of the error.Here, the jury’s question demonstrated that one or more jurors may have erroneously believed, based on CALCRIM No. 3474, that they could not reduce Brim’s murder conviction to one for voluntary manslaughter based on a theory of imperfect self-defense if he killed Williams after the danger Williams presented no longer objectively “exist[ed] or reasonably appear[ed] to exist.”19 (CALCRIM No. 3474.)

Disposition:

The record shows that Brim’s second degree murder conviction is supported by substantial evidence. The error in responding to the jury’s third question regarding CALCRIM No. 3474 could not have affected its rejection of the possibility of perfect self-defense, because that instruction does apply to such possibility. Under these circumstances, the court modified the judgment to reflect Brim’s conviction for voluntary manslaughter instead of second degree murder.

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