## Facts

- Charles Elmore had a long history of severe mental illness, including repeated institutionalization and diagnoses of psychosis.
- On the day of the killing, Elmore was living in a rehabilitation center and behaved erratically while visiting family, appearing anxious and disorganized.
- Ella Suggs, age 53, waited at a bus stop wearing a necklace and reading glasses on a chain.
- A witness saw Elmore approach Suggs, appear to pull at something around her neck, and then stab her in the chest with a sharpened paintbrush handle, killing her.
- Elmore fled, returned soon after looking confused, and was arrested nearby; defense experts later opined he had paranoid schizophrenia and was actively psychotic during the offense.
- Elmore entered dual pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, but withdrew the insanity plea after the jury convicted him of first degree murder.
- At the guilt phase, the defense sought instructions on imperfect self-defense and hallucination; the trial court refused both.

## Issues

1. Whether imperfect (unreasonable) self-defense applies when the defendant’s belief in the need to defend is entirely the product of psychotic delusion.
2. How California’s mental-illness evidence statutes (Pen. Code §§ 28, 29, 25(b)) limit use of mental-disorder evidence at the guilt phase when a defendant claims lack of malice based on a disordered belief in danger.
3. Whether failure to instruct on hallucination at the guilt phase required reversal.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of California affirmed the conviction.
- The court held imperfect self-defense is unavailable when the asserted belief in imminent peril is purely delusional; that theory amounts to an insanity claim reserved for the sanity phase.
- The court rejected the view that Penal Code § 28 permits “delusional self-defense” to negate malice at the guilt phase.
- The court agreed a hallucination instruction should have been given but found the omission harmless on this record.

## Legal Principles

- Imperfect (unreasonable) self-defense is a mistake-of-fact doctrine that negates malice only when the defendant actually, though unreasonably, believes lethal force is necessary based on perceived external circumstances.
- A belief in the need for self-defense that is purely delusional is treated as legal insanity, not as a mistake of fact supporting manslaughter at the guilt phase.
- California’s statutory scheme confines insanity to a separate determination under the M’Naghten test (Pen. Code § 25(b)); defendants may not present insanity in the guilt phase by relabeling delusion as imperfect self-defense.
- Penal Code §§ 28 and 29 permit mental-disorder evidence at the guilt phase to address whether the defendant actually formed required mental states (including malice), but do not authorize a defense theory that depends entirely on psychotic distortion of reality rather than mistaken perception of real-world facts.
- When evidence supports it, a hallucination instruction may be required to guide the jury’s use of hallucination evidence on intent and malice; instructional error may be harmless if the verdict was not affected.

## Conclusion

The court held that imperfect self-defense cannot be based solely on psychotic delusion and that such exculpatory claims must proceed, if at all, under the separate insanity framework; although the trial court should have instructed on hallucination, the omission did not warrant reversal of Elmore’s first degree murder conviction.


People v. Elmore, 59 Cal. 4th 121 (Cal. 2014)