A bare fear of the commission of any of the offenses mentioned in subdivisions 2 and 3 of Section 197, to prevent which homicide may be lawfully committed, is not sufficient to justify it. But the circumstances must be sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable person, and the party killing must have acted under the influence of such fears alone.
Cal. Penal Code § 198
Homicide
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case People v. Humphrey (1996)
Most recently applied in 79 F. App'x 252 - Harris v. Hamlet (October 2003)
Amended by Stats. 1987, Ch. 828, Sec. 8.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.