First-degree murder requires willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing — the defendant formed the intent to kill, considered it, and decided to act. Second-degree murder requires malice but not deliberation — a killing committed with intent to kill in the heat of the moment, or with conscious disregard for human life, without the deliberation element. The premeditation and deliberation can be nearly instantaneous — courts have found first-degree murder where the defendant formed the intent and acted in a matter of seconds. But the evidence of deliberation must be there, and its absence is a real defense to the first-degree charge.

Imperfect self-defense applies when a defendant honestly but unreasonably believed they needed to use deadly force to protect themselves or others. A genuine, subjective belief in the need for self-defense — even if that belief was objectively unreasonable — negates the malice required for murder and reduces the charge to voluntary manslaughter. It’s a partial defense — it doesn’t result in acquittal — but it reduces the sentence from 15-25 years to life to a three-to-eleven-year range. The honest-but-unreasonable belief must be genuine, and we build the record around the defendant’s actual state of mind at the time of the killing.

Before SB 1437 took effect in January 2019, California’s felony murder rule allowed anyone who participated in a specified felony that resulted in a death — even a minor participant who didn’t kill and didn’t intend to kill — to be convicted of first-degree murder. SB 1437 narrowed the rule significantly. Now, a non-killer can be convicted of felony murder only if they were the actual killer, they aided and abetted with the intent to kill, or they were a major participant in the underlying felony who acted with reckless indifference to human life. People convicted under the old rule can petition for resentencing. We handle both current cases under the new standard and petitions for those previously convicted.