Friday, December 28, 2018
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Butter Knife, Used to Slash at Woman, Wasn’t a Deadly Weapon—S.C.
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court yesterday reversed a decision by the Court of Appeal for this district affirming a Juvenile Court order declaring a girl a ward of the court holding that, on the facts of the case, the butter knife she wielded in slashing at her sister was not a “deadly weapon.”
“We hold, consistent with settled principles, that for an object to qualify as a deadly weapon based on how it was used, the defendant must have used the object in a manner not only capable of producing but also likely to produce death or great bodily injury,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote for a unanimous court. Justice Ming Chin added a concurring opinion, in which Justice Carol Corrigan joined.
The appellant, B.M., was 17 when, on the morning of July 2, 2016, she returned home after a night out in 2016 to discover that her key did not work. She entered through a window and confronted her sister, Sophia, after grabbing a butter knife from the kitchen counter.
The victim hid beneath her blankets in her bed. The defendant slashed at her sister’s legs through the blankets.
Both women testified that there had been no stabbing motions involved in the attack, and the victim stated that her sister had not hurt her.
Div. Six’s Opinion
Acting Presiding Justice Kenneth R. Yegan of Div. Six wrote the April 20, 2017 opinion affirming an order by Ventura Superior Court Judge Brian J. Back declaring the girl a ward of the court and ordering her to serve 90 days in juvenile detention.
Declaring that the butter knife in question had been used as a deadly weapon, Yegan wrote:
“It matters not that the victim was able to fend off great bodily injury with her blanket. This self defense does not negate appellant’s assault. Similarly, that appellant was not adept at using a knife does not inure to her benefit. She could have easily inflicted great bodily injury with this metal butter knife and just as easily have committed mayhem upon the victim’s face. The trial court expressly found that it was only ‘lucky’ that there were no injuries.”
In his opinion, Yegan explicitly rejected the reasoning of a prior case from Div. One of this district, In re Brandon T., decided in 2011. In that case, Justice Victoria Gerrard Chaney said that the defendant—who had attempted to slit the victim’s throat with a butter knife—could not have committed an assault with a deadly weapon in an attack on a high school classmate, Deon H., explaining:
“The question remains whether the butter knife, as used, was capable of producing death or great bodily injury. If Brandon had tried a bit harder, could he have killed or significantly injured Deon’s cheek or throat? The evidence demonstrates that the answer is no. The knife broke. The pressure that Brandon applied was not enough to cause death or great bodily injury to Deon. Yet it was too much pressure for the knife to bear, and the handle broke off. Brandon did not attempt to use the broken knife (just the blade without the handle) because the knife in question was incapable of causing death or great bodily injury, as evidenced by the fact that ‘[t]he knife broke.’ ”
Lower Court’s Error
Liu said Yegan’s analysis was flawed. Referring to the rule set forth in the high court’s 1997 decision in People v. Aguilar that an implement used as a deadly weapon must be both capable of and likely to cause death or great bodily injury, he said:
“Although the Court of Appeal in this case recited the Aguilar standard, its analysis addressed only whether B.M.’s manner of using the butter knife was capable of causing great bodily injury, not whether it was likely to do so. And the court misstated the standard by omitting the ‘likely’ requirement when it said ‘an assault with a deadly weapon is complete when the defendant, with the requisite intent, uses an object in a manner which is capable of producing great bodily injury upon the victim.’ ”
Lui noted that “the Aguilar standard does not permit conjecture as to how the object could have been used,” but that the analysis “must rest on evidence of how the defendant actually ‘used’ the object.”
B.M.’s inept slashes at her sister’s legs through a blanket, he remarked, were not likely to cause any injury. “The Court of Appeal’s remark about injury to the victim’s face is an impermissible conjecture as to how B.M. could have used the butter knife,” he said, adding:
“It is not a reasonable inference of potential injury based on evidence of how B.M. actually used the butter knife.”
Chin said in his concurring opinion:
“In this case, we do not decide the question of what ‘likely’ means in the context of the Aguilar standard, and I do not wish to prejudge that question, but our resolution of the question calls for a careful analysis…in the context of a law designed to prevent a harm, ‘likely’ can sometimes mean something less than ‘probable.’ ”
He went on to say:
“Using a butter knife — even one with small ridges on the blade — to make a few slicing motions across the blanket-covered legs of a healthy person is not, under any definition of the word ‘likely,’ an act that is likely to produce great bodily injury.”
The case is In re B.M., 2018 S.O.S. 6206.
Copyright 2018, Metropolitan News Company