People v. Casassa

Facts

Casassa and Victoria Lo Consolo lived in the same apartment complex and met in August, 1976. They apparently dated casually until November, 1976, when she told him she was not "falling in love" with him. Casassa said her candor devastated him. Knowing she saw other people, he broke into the apartment below hers several times to eavesdrop. He also broke into her apartment once while she was out. He took nothing, undressed and lay for a time in her bed. He was armed with a knife that time. On February 28, 1977, he went to her apartment with wine and liquor as a gift. She rejected the gift. He then produced a steak knife he had brought, stabbed her several times in the throat, dragged her body to the bathroom and put it in a bathtub full of water to "make sure she was dead." The next evening, police were questioning residents of the building when Casassa volunteered that he had been in her apartment on the night of the murder. He went with police to headquarters, was questioned for some nine and one-half hours, and confessed. At trial he did not contest the facts of the killing. His only claim was that he acted under extreme emotional disturbance.

Issues

1. Did Casassa establish the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance, which would reduce murder in the second degree to manslaughter in the first degree?
2. Is the reasonableness of the explanation or excuse for a defendant's emotional disturbance judged wholly from the defendant's own subjective viewpoint?
3. Were Casassa's confessions involuntary, or was his right to counsel infringed by his mother's unsuccessful efforts to reach him?

Holding

Reasonableness is not tested by a wholly subjective standard, and the trial court properly applied the statute. Its finding that Casassa's excuse was so peculiar to him that it was unworthy of mitigation was not error as a matter of law, so the murder conviction stood. Nothing showed his confession involuntary as a matter of law, and his right to counsel was not infringed.