New state law ends murder charge if no intent to kill

California law formerly allowed murder charges against someone who did not kill anyone or intend to do so but took part in a crime — a street fight, for example — in which death was a “natural and probable consequence.”

But a law that took effect last year has changed that, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Defendants can still be convicted of the crimes they actually committed, like assault. But under the new law, SB1437, a defendant can no longer be convicted of seconddegree murder “under a theory that the defendant aided and abetted a crime, the natural and probable consequence of which was murder,” the court said in a unanimous ruling.

The case involved a Riverside County man who was involved in a fight in which the victim was killed, apparently by someone else. He ultimately pleaded guilty to seconddegree

murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, a conviction he can try to overturn under the ruling.

Some past cases are more extreme, said Kate Chatfield, policy director of the nonprofit Justice Collaborative and lead drafter of SB1437, which was sponsored by Sen. Nancy Skinner, DBerkeley.

In one case, Chatfield said, during a schoolyard fistfight, when one of the fighters got a gun and fatally shot another brawler, all the combatants were found responsible for murder as a natural and probable consequence of the fight. In another case, she said, when a group of boys were writing graffiti on a wall and the property owner grabbed a knife from one boy and stabbed him, all the youths were charged with attempted murder, even though they did not stab anyone.

State law has allowed murder charges against those who take part in crimes that prove to be fatal. Felonymurder prosecutions, not affected by Thursday’s ruling, can be filed against participants in an inherently dangerous crime, such as arson, rape or robbery, in which someone is killed.

Participation in other crimes, such as assault or disturbing the peace, has resulted in murder convictions when jurors find that a slaying was the “natural and probable consequence” of a defendant’s conduct. In 2014, however, the state Supreme Court rejected charges of premeditated firstdegree murder in such a case because the defendant did not plan or intend the killing.

Thursday’s ruling barred all murder charges in such cases.

The case arose from the June 2014 death of Guillermo Saavedra, 72, a caretaker at a shuttered restaurant in Indio, where his body was found. The defendant, Joseph Gentile Jr., then 59, and his exwife, Saundra Roberts, had been drinking with Saavedra at the restaurant the previous night, and Roberts later testified that Gentile later told her he had gotten into a fight with Saavedra after she left and might have killed him.

Gentile, however, testified that Roberts had struck Saavedra several times with a weapon like the broken golf club that was found near his body. Only Gentile was prosecuted, and a jury initially convicted him of firstdegree murder while finding that he had not personally used a deadly weapon. That conviction was overturned, based on the state Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling, and he then pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder to avoid a retrial.

But the court said SB1437, which took effect after Gentile’s guilty plea, would clear him of a murder charge that was based on his nonfatal fight with Saavedra. The jury’s finding suggested that jurors “did not think he was the actual perpetrator,” Justice Goodwin Liu said in the 70 ruling, so a conviction would require a conclusion that a murder by someone else was the natural and probable consequence of Gentile’s fistfight.

Such charges are no longer allowed under SB1437, Liu said, because the new law limits murder prosecutions to defendants who killed someone, deliberately or recklessly, or who intentionally aided in a crime that was likely to be fatal. While the law does not automatically overturn pre2019 convictions, he said, it allows Gentile to ask a Riverside County judge to nullify his seconddegree murder conviction, unless prosecutors have additional evidence of his guilt.

Gentile’s lawyer, Eric Larson, called the ruling ” very significant” and said he would seek to overturn the murder conviction, which would leave Gentile convicted of the lesser charge of assault. Prosecutors could not be reached for comment.

The case is People vs. Gentile, S256698.