California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Dalton, F063443 (Cal. App. 2014):
Defendant is correct that the prosecutor's hypothetical question regarding whether "a reasonable person would be provoked to pulling out a gun and firing" suggests an incorrect test for determining whether defendant acted in the heat of passion. It asks how a reasonable person would have acted in defendant's position. "[P]rovocation is not evaluated by whether the average person would act in a certain way: to kill. Instead, the question is whether the average person would react in a certain way: with his reason and judgment obscured." (People v. Beltran (2013) 56 Cal.4th 935, 949, original italics.) Here, the prosecutor's statements effectively "suggest[ed] that the jury should consider the ordinary person's conduct and whether such a person would kill.... [T]his was not the correct standard." (Id. at p. 954, fn. omitted.)
The question becomes whether defendant's trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to object to the prosecutor's statement. The burden is on defendant to establish ineffective assistance by a preponderance of the evidence. (People v. Ledesma (1987) 43 Cal.3d 171, 218.) To do so, a defendant "must show both that trial
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