CA · jury_instructions
CALCRIM No. 3471
Right to Self-Defense: Mutual Combat or Initial Aggressor
A person who (engages in mutual combat/ [or who] starts a fight) has a
right to self-defense only if:
1. (He/She) actually and in good faith tried to stop fighting;
[AND]
2. (He/She) indicated, by word or by conduct, to (his/her) opponent,
in a way that a reasonable person would understand, that (he/she)
wanted to stop fighting and that (he/she) had stopped fighting(;/.)
<Give element 3 in cases of mutual combat.>
[AND
3. (He/She) gave (his/her) opponent a chance to stop fighting.]
If the defendant meets these requirements, (he/she) then had a right to
self-defense if the opponent continued to fight.
[However, if the defendant used only non-deadly force, and the opponent
responded with such sudden and deadly force that the defendant could
not withdraw from the fight, then the defendant had the right to defend
(himself/herself) with deadly force and was not required to try to stop
fighting(,/ or) communicate the desire to stop to the opponent[, or give
the opponent a chance to stop fighting].]
[A fight is mutual combat when it began or continued by mutual consent
or agreement. That agreement may be expressly stated or implied and
must occur before the claim to self-defense arose.]
New January 2006; Revised April 2008, December 2008, April 2011, February 2013
Provenance
- Source
- courts.ca.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-20
- Edition
- calcrim-2020
- Content hash
d547e1adc65027ea9ba7a5626708b0fc7e4208f6d4ed5d0c52012094ca407d58
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.