CA · jury_instructions
CALCRIM No. 500
Homicide: General Principles
Homicide is the killing of one human being by another. (Murder/ [and]
(Manslaughter/manslaughter)) (is/are) [a] type[s] of homicide. The
defendant is charged with (murder/ [and] manslaughter). [Manslaughter
is a lesser offense to murder.]
[A homicide can be lawful or unlawful. If a person kills with a legally
valid excuse or justification, the killing is lawful and he or she has not
committed a crime. If there is no legally valid excuse or justification, the
killing is unlawful and, depending on the circumstances, the person is
guilty of either murder or manslaughter. Y ou must decide whether the
killing in this case was unlawful and, if so, what specific crime was
committed. I will now instruct you in more detail on what is a legally
permissible excuse or justification for homicide.] [I will [also] instruct
you on the different types of (murder/ [and] manslaughter).]
New January 2006
Provenance
- Source
- courts.ca.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-20
- Edition
- calcrim-2019
- Content hash
41a1c4c38f11af9b177fe66f3442759e4f13d806c02764f26619630172051f78
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.