State High Court Agrees to Hear Appeal in Shooting Case : Hearing: It seeks to reverse ruling reducing a Laguna Niguel teen’s murder conviction to manslaughter.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear an appeal in a case involving a Laguna Niguel teen-ager who was convicted of the 1990 fatal shooting of a fellow high school student on a crowded beach in Dana Point.

The appeal seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that reduced the murder conviction of Christian Aaron Steffens to manslaughter.

Steffens, then 17, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Robert James Elliot, 18, on a stretch of beach known as Dana Point Strand on Sept. 8, 1990.

During court proceedings, witnesses told a story of vendettas, gangs and drugs among white, upper-class teen-agers. They testified about the animosity between Steffens and Elliot, which dated back to when the two were eighth-graders and had dramatically escalated in the months before the shooting.

Three weeks before Elliot was shot, his pickup truck window was smashed and he blamed Steffens. The two teen-agers met at the beach, argued about the broken window and had a fistfight, according to court testimony.

A Dana Hills High School teacher testified in court that the day after that Sept. 5 confrontation, two males, who were not students, unsuccessfully tried to hunt Steffens down at school.

Steffens, who told the court that he feared for his life, then began carrying a loaded pistol and shot Elliot to death on the beach after another confrontation.

A Superior Court judge convicted Steffens of murder in a non-jury trial in Juvenile Court and sentenced him to the California Youth Authority until the age of 25.

Last November, the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that Steffens lacked the intent to kill required for a murder conviction and reduced the charge to manslaughter.

Prosecutors in the case said they will raise the issue of whether an honest, but unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense can reduce murder to manslaughter.

A hearing has not yet been set.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.