## Facts

- Jerad Allen Pickering and his friend Jesse Bates went to the apartment of their friend Eugene Morgan.
- Two other men, Leon Villarreal and Jose Torres, were at the apartment.
- An argument among the men escalated into a physical fight.
- During the confrontation, Pickering stabbed Villarreal, who died.
- The People charged Pickering with second-degree murder.
- At trial, Pickering’s defense theory was self-defense.
- At the close of evidence, the trial court instructed the jury on:
  - Second-degree murder (requiring the People to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pickering knowingly caused Villarreal’s death and did not act in self-defense).
  - The lesser-included offense of reckless manslaughter (requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Pickering recklessly caused Villarreal’s death, without repeating self-defense in that elemental instruction).
  - Additional instructions explaining how self-defense related to the charged and lesser offenses, plus an instruction defining self-defense.
- The jury acquitted on second-degree murder and convicted Pickering of reckless manslaughter.
- The Colorado Court of Appeals reversed, concluding the instruction package could have been read to shift the burden of proof on self-defense for reckless manslaughter.
- The Colorado Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court’s self-defense and reckless-manslaughter instructions, read together, improperly shifted to the defendant any burden related to self-defense, rather than requiring the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. Whether the court of appeals’ approach in People v. Lara and People v. Taylor (treating similar instructions as unconstitutional burden shifting) stated the correct rule.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court held that the jury instructions did not shift the prosecution’s burden of proof and did not misstate the law when read as a whole.
- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Colorado Court of Appeals and reinstated Pickering’s reckless-manslaughter conviction.
- The Court overruled contrary rules announced in People v. Lara and People v. Taylor.
- A dissent would have found a meaningful risk that jurors could read the “do not bear the burden” language as relieving the People of their obligation on the lesser offense once self-defense was raised.

## Legal Principles

- Jury instructions are reviewed as a whole; an appellate court does not isolate a single phrase or instruction if the complete set accurately states the governing law.
- In Colorado, once a defendant properly raises self-defense, the prosecution generally must disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt as part of meeting its overall burden of proof.
- For a lesser offense defined by a reckless mental state (such as reckless manslaughter), the trial court need not repeat “did not act in self-defense” inside the elemental instruction so long as the full instruction package correctly explains self-defense and still requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element submitted to the jury.
- An instruction tracking Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1-704(4) and stating that the People “do not bear the burden” of disproving self-defense for a reckless-mens-rea offense is not automatically unconstitutional; the question is how a reasonable juror would understand the instructions taken together.
- Appellate decisions labeling such language as burden shifting are incorrect if they ignore the surrounding instructions that (1) define self-defense, (2) explain its relationship to the charged and lesser offenses, and (3) keep the prosecution’s beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden on the elements the jury must find.

## Conclusion

People v. Pickering, 276 P.3d 553 (Colo. 2011), upheld a reckless-manslaughter conviction where the defendant argued self-defense, holding that the trial court’s self-defense and lesser-included-offense instructions, read together, did not transfer any burden to the defendant and did not relieve the prosecution of proving the offense beyond a reasonable doubt; the Court reversed the court of appeals, reinstated the conviction, and rejected the contrary approach taken in Lara and Taylor.


People v. Pickering, 276 P.3d 553 (2011)