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64 N.Y.2d 741

People v. Walker

New York Court of Appeals

Decided December 27, 1984

New York Court of Appeals · decided 1984-12-27

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“A person is guilty of murder in the second degree when: 1. With intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of such person or of a third person; except that in any prosecution under this subdivision, it is an affirmative defense that: (a) The defendant acted under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation or excuse, the reasonableness of which is to be determined from the viewpoint of a person in the defendant’s situation under the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be.... N.Y.Penal Law § 125.20(2) provides that a defendant charged with murder in the second degree who successfully offers an extreme emotional disturbance defense is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. A person is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree when: With intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of such person or of a third person under circumstances which do not constitute murder because he acts under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance, as defined in paragraph (a) of subdivision one of section 125.25. The fact that homicide was committed under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance constitutes a mitigating circumstance reducing murder to manslaughter in the first degree and need not be proved in any prosecution initiated under this subdivision....”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Rice v. Hoke

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1984-12-27

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently August 2020

10 federal appellate ·

8019841990200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1OPINION OF THE COURT

¶2Memorandum.

¶3The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.

¶4The evidence showed that the defendant, in the culmination of a long-standing disagreement, shot and killed the victim in a bar after an argument over money, which the victim claimed was owed him, and after the victim placed his hand on the defendant’s plate of food. Under these circumstances the trial court was not obligated to charge the affirmative defense to murder in the second degree that the defendant “acted under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance” (Penal Law, § 125.25, subd 1, par [a]).

¶5*743In order for a defendant to be entitled to a charge on “extreme emotional disturbance” there must be evidence sufficient for a jury to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the elements of this affirmative defense were established (cf. People v Watts, 57 NY2d 299). Here there was no evidence which suggested the presence of “extreme emotional disturbance” (cf. ALI Model Penal Code, § 210.3, Comment, p 61) and thus charging the affirmative defense would have invited the jury to impermissibly speculate as to the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the shooting. At most, the evidence at trial showed that the defendant acted out of anger or embarrassment, or both. While these emotions might sometimes serve as the “reasonable explanation” for the presence of “extreme emotional disturbance” they are not equivalent to the loss of self-control generally associated with that defense, and are not necessarily indicative of the “mental infirmity”, not rising to the level of insanity, discussed in People v Patterson (39 NY2d 288, 302, affd 432 US 197; see People v Casassa, 49 NY2d 668, 677-678).

¶6Chief Judge Cooke and Judges Jasen, Jones, Wachtler, Meyer, Simons and Kaye concur.

¶7Order affirmed in a memorandum.

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