Case Raises Questions About ‘Justifiable Homicide’ Law

The decision not to prosecute an Anaheim man who attacked and killed his stepfather when he reportedly caught him molesting his infant daughter created a situation in which prosecutors had to “look beyond the letter of the law” because it was unlikely that any jury would convict him, legal scholars say.

Though the Orange County district attorney’s office called the case a “justifiable homicide” when it decided not to prosecute Jesus Flores, 20, several legal professors questioned Tuesday whether the case really meets the law’s definitions.

“To me, it sounds like the issue really in the case is how do you draw the line between protecting the child and taking revenge?” UC Berkeley law school professor Philip Johnson said. “It seems to me there might possibly be grounds to suspect that this guy is punishing the crime, rather than preventing it.”

Yet most legal scholars contacted by The Times said the district attorney was probably correct in deciding not to try a case there was little hope of winning.

“These are areas where you have to look beyond the letter of the law,” said Yale Kamisar, a nationally known law professor from the University of Michigan who has studied euthanasia prosecutions extensively.

“It’s defensible for a prosecutor to say, ‘There’s so much sympathy for this person that the odds are very high that a jury won’t convict anyhow,’ ” Kamisar said. “The law in practice is different from the law on the books. The law in practice is that people are very sympathetic.”

Flores and his stepfather, Thomas Michael Hobeck, 45, had been having a few beers after work last week when Flores went out to buy more beer, leaving his 18-month-old daughter and twin 3-month-old daughters in Hobeck’s care. His wife, April, was at work.

Flores told police that when he returned and caught Hobeck molesting the oldest girl, he exploded and attacked him. Flores then asked a friend to call police and held Hobeck until they arrived.

Police arrested Flores after Hobeck died a short time later at UCI Medical Center, and the district attorney’s office was left with the difficult question of what--if any--charges to bring against him.

“Nobody likes it when someone gets killed in a situation like this, nobody encourages it,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen said. “But the law makes room for what happened in this case, when you look at the circumstances.”

Under the California Penal Code, one form of justifiable homicide is defined as a killing committed “in the lawful defense of . . . a child when there is reasonable ground to (believe that the child) is in imminent danger of . . . great bodily injury.”

Four law professors interviewed by The Times, basing their judgment on a brief account of the case, all questioned whether Flores’ actions in this case would have met the law’s requirement that only “reasonable force” be used to prevent the crime.

“If this guy is big enough and strong enough to beat his stepfather to a pulp, it seems that he could have protected the child just by grabbing him and pulling him away,” said Kenneth Karst, constitutional law professor at UCLA.

Kamisar said: “If someone is sexually molesting your child, you certainly are provoked. I can’t think of any greater provocation, but provocation is a mitigating circumstance, it’s not a complete defense. That would only reduce the charge to manslaughter.”

Yet juries commonly acquit defendants on such charges, Kamisar said, citing a recent case in which a father was acquitted in the shooting death of a man who had kidnaped and repeatedly molested his 13-year-old son.

Mercy killings of sick family members or cases in which a man hunts down and kills a man who raped his wife also commonly end in acquittal, though many of the issues are the same, Kamisar said.

“I think it’s probably legitimate for the prosecutor (in such cases) to say there’s no point in prosecuting this guy . . . there’s no point in setting the criminal law machinery in motion.”

Yet Flores’ attorney, Robert Chatterton, said the law clearly authorized his client to use “whatever force necessary” to detain someone who has committed a violent felony.

Moreover, there is no indication that Flores meant to kill his stepfather, Chatterton said. The fact that Hobeck died of a laceration of the liver indicated that he probably died as a result of kicks or punches to the stomach, and most people would not expect to kill someone by kicking him in the stomach, Chatterton said.

“In this case, Mr. Flores exploded at what he saw, but I don’t think he ever meant to kill,” Jensen said.

The case was by no means the first instance of justifiable homicide in Orange County.

But Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright said that “in my 25 years as a prosecutor this is the first case where the facts just jump out at you that this is a justifiable homicide.”

“There are not 12 people in the world who would have gotten together and found this guy guilty on the facts that we know,” Enright added.

Prosecutors would never have been able to meet the legal burden of proof required, to establish beyond a reasonable doubt “that this guy had no possible reason to act the way he acted,” Enright said.

Moreover, Enright said he also believes that Flores did not intend to kill his stepfather--something that must be established to prove even voluntary manslaughter.

“He ran across the street and yelled to somebody to call the police,” Enright said. “His conduct was pretty much irrational and rational at the same time. . . . He belted and banged and smacked the guy around, and went to his next-door neighbor and told him to call the police.”

Flores was released from the Anaheim city jail Friday, two days after the incident.