Can a defendant be found not guilty of a charge of second-degree murder for allegedly choking and stabbing a victim?

^13. Perez suggests she cannot be convicted because the evidence did not establish she was the one who stabbed Ballesteros. Although the record does not precisely demonstrate which defendant choked Ballesteros and which defendant stabbed him, both the choking and the stabbing were proximate causes of Ballesteros's death. (See People v. Sanchez (2001) 26 Cal.4th 834, 847 [" ' "When the conduct of two or more persons contributes concurrently as the proximate cause of the death, the conduct of each is a proximate cause of the death if that conduct was also a substantial factor contributing to the result. A cause is concurrent if it was operative at the time of the death and acted with another cause to produce the death." ' " italics omitted]; see also People v. McCoy (2001) 25 Cal.4th 1111, 1120 ["[I]n a stabbing case, one person might restrain the victim while the other does the stabbing. . . . [B]oth participants would be direct perpetrators as well as aiders and abettors of the other."].) "It is proximate causation, not direct or actual causation, which together with the requisite mental state determines the defendant's liability for murder." (People v. Canizalez (2011) 197 Cal.App.4th 832, 845.)

^14. We need not, therefore, address the claimed provocations inciting passion.