## Facts

- A man named Bill threatened Roney White’s young cousins with a knife at a 7‑Eleven near Roney’s home.
- After learning of the knife incident, Roney confronted Bill outside the store, punched him in the face, and fled.
- Later that night, apparently in response to Roney’s punch, Aaron Kar and his friends drove past a group standing in the street that included Roney and his brother Roscoe White and tried (unsuccessfully) to hit someone with a stick from the moving car.
- The next afternoon, Bill and another person attacked Roney with a baseball bat while Roney was walking alone; Roney was badly injured and taken to the hospital.
- Shortly after the bat attack, Roscoe and friends discussed retaliation and the possibility of an armed fight; when Roscoe could not get his own gun to work, he called friends in Nashua to bring a gun.
- That evening, Michael Soto drove from Nashua to Manchester with others, met Roscoe and the group, and Roscoe confirmed that Soto had brought a gun.
- The group smoked marijuana and agreed on a plan to find and confront the people they believed were responsible for attacking Roney.
- After driving around, they spotted a group near a dumpster whom they suspected were involved; they drove past once or twice, then parked around the corner and talked about who would shoot.
- The group chose Roscoe as the shooter because he was Roney’s brother.
- Soto wiped the gun with his shirt, racked the slide to cock it, handed it to Roscoe, and told him the gun was “smooth.”
- Roscoe shot Aaron Kar in the leg and abdomen; Kar later died from the gunshot wounds.
- Soto was convicted of first‑degree murder on an accomplice-liability theory and appealed, arguing the jury should have been instructed on provocation manslaughter as a lesser offense.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on provocation manslaughter as a lesser-included offense of first-degree murder in an accomplice-liability prosecution.
2. Whether the evidence provided a rational basis for a jury to find that the killing occurred under legally adequate provocation (extreme emotional disturbance/sudden passion) rather than the intent required for first-degree murder.

## Decision

- The New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed Soto’s conviction for being an accomplice to first-degree murder.
- The court held the trial court did not err in declining to give a provocation-manslaughter instruction because the evidence did not provide a rational basis to support that lesser verdict.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant is entitled to a lesser-included-offense instruction only when the evidence provides a rational basis for convicting on the lesser offense and acquitting on the greater offense.
- Under accomplice liability, the State must prove the defendant purposely aided (or attempted to aid) another in planning or committing the charged offense, with the mental state required for that offense.
- Provocation manslaughter requires evidence of legally adequate provocation and a heat-of-passion/extreme-emotional-disturbance type response sufficient to mitigate what would otherwise be murder.
- Evidence of time for reflection, preparation, and coordinated retaliatory action can defeat a claim that the killing occurred under sudden passion or adequate provocation.
- When the record shows deliberate steps such as obtaining a gun from another city, planning the confrontation, selecting the shooter, and preparing the weapon immediately before the shooting, a provocation-manslaughter instruction may be properly denied for lack of an evidentiary foundation.

## Conclusion

Because the shooting followed a series of deliberate, retaliatory steps—calling for a gun, traveling to obtain it, searching for the targets, selecting Roscoe as shooter, and Soto’s act of wiping, cocking, and handing over the weapon—the evidence did not support a reasonable finding that the homicide occurred under legally adequate provocation; the trial court therefore correctly refused a provocation-manslaughter instruction, and Soto’s accomplice first-degree murder conviction was affirmed.


State v. Soto, 34 A.3d 738 (2011)