Justices Skeptical of Attempt to Limit...

The California Supreme Court, hearing an Orange County case, seemed skeptical Monday of an attempt to prevent defendants from escaping murder convictions when they kill out of an honest but mistaken conviction that their lives are in danger.

The so-called “imperfect self-defense” doctrine is a powerful tool for defense attorneys. Used typically by battered wives, the defense helped produce hung juries in the recent murder trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez.

In the case before the court, a Dana Point teen-ager killed a reputed member of a “skinhead” gang who had threatened and harassed him for about a year before the killing.

Christian Steffens, then 16, the defendant, shot and killed Robert Elliott, a schoolmate, on Sept. 8, 1990, after Elliott chased him on the beach, threatening “to get” him for smashing his truck window. Although Elliott was not armed, he refused to retreat after a trembling Steffens pointed a gun at him.

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 Elliott, which dated back to when the two were eighth-graders and had dramatically escalated in the months before the shooting.

Witnesses testified during the trial that Steffens was so fearful of Elliott that he had taken to sleeping with a gun next to his bed. Steffens believed Elliott was responsible for twice firing a weapon into his bedroom. Shortly before the shooting, Elliott blamed Steffens for breaking his car window.

A judge convicted the boy of second-degree murder, but a Court of Appeal in Santa Ana reduced the conviction to manslaughter. The court held Steffens had an “honest but unreasonable fear of immediate harm.”

Several Supreme Court justices indicated during oral arguments Tuesday that they did not accept the California attorney general’s contention that the state Legislature and voters intended to abolish such defenses when they changed the requirements for proving murder in the early 1980s.

“I cannot imagine something more in mitigation (in a killing) than the belief that my life is in danger,” said Justice Ronald M. George, “even if the belief turns out to be somewhat unreasonable.”

Murder defendants may be convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter if they can show they believed they were in imminent harm, as unreasonable as their fear might have been.

Without the defense, judges would be required to instruct juries to convict defendants of murder unless the killing occurred in clear self-defense or the heat of passion.

In the Menendez case, which is expected to be retried, defense lawyers claimed that the brothers killed their parents because they feared for their lives after years of physical and emotional abuse.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard cited a legislative committee report that said such defenses were not being abolished when the Legislature narrowed the legal requirements for proving murder in 1981. She also noted that a majority of states have found such defenses proper.

The court will issue an opinion in the case within 90 days.