## Facts

- Patrick Riley, a peddler traveling with a wagon and team, lost two horses after they strayed.
- Riley offered Charles Hecker, a local resident, a $10 reward to find and return the horses.
- Hecker located the horses on his land, corralled them, and brought them to the Briceland property; whether Hecker surrendered the horses to Riley’s wife or retained constructive possession and a lien for the reward was disputed.
- Riley later accused Hecker of stealing the horses and refused to pay the promised reward.
- Hecker armed himself and went to the barn to retake the horses as security for the unpaid reward; Riley attempted to interfere and Hecker warned that he was armed.
- A confrontation escalated into a struggle and an extended exchange of gunfire involving movement around the property and calls for additional weapons and ammunition.
- Hecker shot and killed Riley, admitted the killing, and claimed he acted in self-defense based on threats and fear of death or great bodily injury.

## Issues

1. Whether the jury instructions correctly stated the law of self-defense, including whether a person feloniously assaulted must retreat or may stand their ground.
2. Whether a defendant who provokes or engages in wrongful conduct connected to the affray may claim self-defense without withdrawing in good faith and communicating withdrawal.
3. Whether the instructions properly required an objectively reasonable belief in imminent danger and apparent necessity to justify lethal force.
4. Whether refusal of proposed instructions on a finder’s property rights and lien theory, and other evidentiary and instructional rulings, constituted reversible error.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment convicting Hecker of second-degree murder.
- The court held the jury was adequately and correctly instructed on self-defense when the charge was considered as a whole.
- The court upheld refusal of requested instructions concerning finders of lost property as irrelevant to the homicide and self-defense issues.
- The court found no reversible error in the trial court’s evidentiary rulings, including admission of events sufficiently connected to explain how and why the killing occurred.

## Legal Principles

- A person subjected to a felonious assault is not generally required to retreat and may stand their ground; self-defense remains governed by necessity and reasonableness.
- An initial aggressor or one who provokes the difficulty cannot rely on self-defense unless the person withdraws in good faith, communicates that withdrawal, and the adversary continues the attack.
- Justification for killing in self-defense requires both actual belief and objectively reasonable grounds to believe the defendant faced imminent death or great bodily injury, and that lethal force was apparently necessary.
- Deadly force is not justified to resist a trespass or interference with property; property claims, liens, or possession disputes do not permit sacrificing human life.
- Evidence closely connected in time and character to the crime may be admitted to explain the occurrence and its motivation.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Hecker’s second-degree murder conviction, concluding that the jury received legally sufficient self-defense instructions and could reject justification where the defendant armed himself to pursue a property dispute and the claimed necessity for lethal force was not established under objective, necessity-based self-defense standards.


People v. Hecker, 109 Cal. 451, 42 P. 307 (Cal. 1895)