Senate OKs Bill Allowing Claim of Justifiable Homicide : State Legislature: The measure would allow certain victims of domestic violence to plead self-defense.

A controversial bill that would allow certain victims of domestic violence--usually women--to invoke a justifiable homicide defense in the killings of their attackers was approved by the Senate Friday.

Carried by Sen. Lucy Killea (I-San Diego), the legislation was supported by a variety of women lawyers and victims rights organizations and opposed by Dist. Atty. Gilbert L. Garcetti, Atty. Gen. Daniel Lungren and other prosecutors throughout California.

The bill originally was defeated on Thursday but the Senate reversed itself Friday and approved it without debate on a 21-9 vote, the exact simple majority required for passage to the Assembly. Local prosecutors are expected to mount another fight against it in the lower chamber.

Killea, who said her bill was narrowly written to apply to only limited circumstances, contended that some domestic violence victims accused of second-degree murder in the slayings of their partners are deprived of a fair trial because they cannot claim justifiable homicide as a defense.

“These individuals have been placed in the unfortunate position of having to kill their abusers or be killed, and may have been acquitted had they been able to claim self-defense,” Killea said.

An assistant to Killea, Bob Giroux, said if the bill had been law at the time of their trials, it probably would have applied to the cases of about seven of the 30 women prisoners, who last month applied for clemency from Gov. Pete Wilson.

Under the bill, defendants claiming the justifiable homicide defense would have to produce independent evidence demonstrating that they had been repeatedly beaten, raped or sodomized and imprisoned by their spouses or domestic partners. Additionally, they would have to show that they honestly believed that they or their children were in “imminent danger” of death or injury at the hands of the abuser.

But opponents of the bill, while expressing sympathy for some desperate domestic violence victims who use deadly force to escape their attackers, argued Thursday that the proposal went too far, a contention shared by the prosecutors.

Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) argued that the bill would, unjustly, create a “complete defense” for first-degree murder if “you are a victim of repeated abuse . . . (and) if you believe your life is in danger or that someone close to you is in danger.”

Likewise, Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara) warned that the bill seemed to condone “premeditated murder in response to situations that are not an immediate and direct physical threat” to the defendant.

However, Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside), a former undersheriff who had investigated killings resulting from domestic violence, urged support of the bill because “many times the women are not criminals, per se. They are forced into situations where they don’t know what to do.”