## Facts

- Michael Person and Leshea Pouncey had been engaged, but the relationship ended and Pouncey began seeing someone else.
- Person went to Pouncey’s apartment to retrieve belongings and entered the apartment while Pouncey was not home.
- When Pouncey returned, a confrontation occurred inside the apartment.
- During the confrontation, Person stabbed Pouncey, causing her death.
- Person later went to the police and admitted he killed Pouncey.
- Person was charged and tried for murder.
- At trial, Person did not dispute that he caused Pouncey’s death, but raised the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance (EED) in an effort to reduce murder to manslaughter.
- Person presented evidence that he suffered from mental illness, and argued that the jury should evaluate the reasonableness of any “explanation or excuse” for his emotional disturbance by taking that condition into account as part of his “situation.”
- The trial court instructed the jury on EED using the statutory formulation (including the “defendant’s situation” language), but did not separately instruct that mental illness evidence must be considered as part of the defendant’s “situation.”
- The jury rejected the EED defense and found Person guilty of murder.
- Person appealed, claiming the EED instruction misled the jury by not expressly directing it to consider evidence of his mental illness when deciding what constituted his “situation.”

## Issues

1. Did the trial court improperly instruct the jury on the EED defense by failing to explain that the jury could consider evidence of the defendant’s mental illness as part of the defendant’s “situation,” creating a reasonable possibility the jury was misled?

## Decision

- The court affirmed Person’s murder conviction.
- The court held the EED instruction, read as a whole, accurately stated the law and did not create a reasonable possibility that the jury was misled.
- The court concluded the jury was not barred from considering mental-illness evidence under the charge given, and the trial court was not required to provide a special instruction highlighting mental illness as an element of the defendant’s “situation.”

## Legal Principles

- EED is an affirmative defense that, if proved, reduces what would otherwise be murder to manslaughter; it requires proof that the defendant acted under an extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation or excuse.
- The reasonableness of the explanation or excuse is evaluated from the viewpoint of a person in the defendant’s situation under the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be.
- Jury instructions are reviewed in their entirety, and a conviction will be reversed only if the challenged instruction created a reasonable possibility the jury was misled.
- A trial court generally has discretion in the wording of a charge, so long as the instructions fairly present the applicable legal standard and allow the jury to consider the evidence admitted at trial.
- A court is not required to single out particular evidence (including evidence of mental illness) for special emphasis when the instructions otherwise permit the jury to consider the defendant’s circumstances in applying the statutory test.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Person’s murder conviction because the EED instruction, considered as a whole, correctly stated the governing standard and did not mislead jurors into disregarding mental-illness evidence when determining the defendant’s “situation” and the reasonableness of any claimed explanation or excuse for an extreme emotional disturbance.


State v. Person, 761 A.2d 269 (2000)