Involuntary Manslaughter – California Law – 192(b) PC

California Penal Code 192(b) PC makes it a felony crime to commit involuntary manslaughter. This occurs by unlawfully causing the death of another person by acting with criminal negligence.¹

Also called negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter carries two, three, or four years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.⁵

Unlike murder, involuntary manslaughter requires no malice aforethought, which is the intent to kill another person or a conscious disregard for human life.² Or if the incident involves a car accident, you would instead face charges for the separate crime of vehicular manslaughter.³

Dr. Conrad Murray, who prescribed Michael Jackson a surgical anesthetic that eventually killed him, is probably California’s most famous involuntary manslaughter defendant in recent years. He received the maximum jail sentence of four years.⁴

In this article, our Los Angeles criminal defense attorneys will address the following key issues regarding California involuntary manslaughter laws:

• 1. Elements of 192(b) PC
• 2. Penalties
• 3. Defenses
• 4. Related Crimes
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Additional Reading

1. Elements of 192(b) PC

For you to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter in California, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the following three elements of the jury instructions:

1. You committed an infraction, misdemeanor, a non-inherently dangerous felony, OR you committed a lawful act done in an unlawful manner; and
2. You committed the crime or act with “criminal negligence”; and
3. Your actions proximately caused another person’s death.⁶

Let’s take a closer look at each of these elements in order to better understand what they mean in practice.

Element 1: Crime or lawful act in an unlawful manner

In California, involuntary manslaughter occurs only when you do something wrong. Pure freak accidents do not suffice. The wrongful act can be either:

1. A civil infraction, which is a low-level offense that carries only a fine, such as a traffic violation or disturbing the peace;
2. A misdemeanor; or
3. A felony that is not considered “inherently dangerous”; or
4. An act that is not a crime—but is done in an unlawful manner.⁷

If you kill someone in the process of committing a felony that is “inherently dangerous,” you will not be charged with involuntary manslaughter. You will instead be charged with murder under California’s “felony-murder rule.”⁸

Example: Stanley is a faith healer who has no medical license. Lee, who is suffering from leukemia, comes to him for treatment. Stanley gives Lee regular abdominal massages that he claims will cure the cancer. In fact, the massages cause Lee to suffer massive internal bleeding, which kills him.

Stanley killed Lee in the process of committing the crime of unauthorized practice of medicine. This is a felony that is not inherently dangerous. Thus, Stanley is charged with involuntary manslaughter rather than murder.⁹

Element 2: Criminal Negligence

Regardless of whether you are charged with involuntary manslaughter based on an underlying crime or an underlying lawful act, the prosecutor must be able to show that you acted with “criminal negligence.”¹⁰

Criminal negligence is more than just ordinary carelessness, inattention, or mistake in judgment. It occurs only when:

1. You act in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury; and
2. A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk.¹¹

Example: Isabel leaves her four young children home alone when she goes out to a bar. While she is gone, a fire breaks out in her house, killing her youngest child.

Isabel is not guilty of involuntary manslaughter because her actions were not criminally negligent. The odds of a fire occurring in the house while she was gone were not great, and she could not reasonably have foreseen that death or injury would result from her actions.¹²

Element 3: Causing a Person’s Death

Your act is considered to have proximately caused another person’s death if their death was the direct, natural, and probable consequence of your act, and the death would not have occurred without your act.¹³

In short, your act must be a “substantial factor” in causing the death, and a reasonable person would have had to realize that the death was likely to happen.¹⁴

Example: While watching a sports game at a bar, Sam and Jason—who are rooting for different teams—get into an argument. Thinking it will come off as a silly prank, Sam throws a bowl of peanuts at Jason—thus committing misdemeanor battery.

It turns out that Jason is life-threateningly allergic to peanuts. He has a severe reaction to the peanuts and does not seek treatment quickly enough because he is drunk. He ends up dying at the hospital. Sam is probably not guilty of involuntary manslaughter, though. This is because Jason’s death was not a natural and probable consequence of tossing a bowl of peanuts at someone.

“Involuntary Manslaughter Based on Failure to Perform a Legal Duty”

A subset of involuntary manslaughter crimes is “involuntary manslaughter based on failure to perform a legal duty.” For you to be convicted, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt these four elements of the crime:

1. You had a legal duty to the victim; and
2. You failed to perform that legal duty; and
3. Your failure was criminally negligent; and
4. Your failure to perform the duty caused the victim’s death.¹⁶

Whether you have a “legal duty” to someone else is an issue that is decided by a judge, not a jury, in an involuntary manslaughter case.¹⁷ Examples of relationships that give rise to a legal duty are:

• The parent-child relationship;
• A paid caretaker-patient relationship; and
• When one person has “assumed responsibility” for another person.¹⁸

Example: Carol meets Luke at a bar. He then comes back to her house. Carol knows that Luke is drunk. He tells her he is going to shoot heroin in her bathroom. After he does so, he collapses. Carol drags him outside to her yard and leaves him there before going to sleep. In the morning, he is dead.

By bringing Luke back to her house when he was drunk, and allowing him to use her bathroom to shoot heroin, Carol created a legal duty to Luke. Because she did not seek medical help for him when he collapsed, she is guilty of involuntary manslaughter.¹⁹

Examples

Examples of involuntary manslaughter include the following scenarios:

• A man steals a bicycle that has been left outside of a store (thus committing petty theft). As he is riding away on the bicycle, he strikes a pedestrian who eventually dies of her injuries.
• During a fight with her husband, a woman retrieves her gun and waves it at him to threaten him (thus committing brandishing a weapon). The gun accidentally fires, killing the husband.
• A farm owner forces his workers to pick vegetables in record-breaking heat. One of them, a pregnant woman, collapses and dies of heatstroke.
• A woman has a dog that has attacked people on several occasions. She lets the dog run off-leash at a dog park, and the dog mauls another dog owner who is at the park–leading to charges of both involuntary manslaughter and failing to control a dangerous animal.

2. Penalties

As discussed earlier, involuntary manslaughter is always a felony in California. The potential penalties for violating 192(b) PC include:

• Felony (formal) probation;
• 2, 3, or 4 years in jail; and
• Up to $10,000 in fines.²⁰

Involuntary manslaughter often triggers a civil lawsuit by the victim’s family as well, which can result in very large civil judgments.

In addition, if you accidentally kill someone with a firearm or another “dangerous or deadly weapon,” and you are convicted of involuntary manslaughter, then the conviction will be a “strike” offense under California’s “three strikes law.”²¹

3. Defenses

Here at Shouse Law Group, we have represented literally thousands of people in California charged with violent crimes such as involuntary manslaughter.²² In our experience, the following three defenses have proven very effective with prosecutors, judges, and juries at getting 192(b) PC charges reduced or dismissed.

1) You Acted in Self-Defense or Defense of Others

You can claim self-defense/defense of others when all of the following are true:

1. You reasonably believed that you or someone else was in imminent danger of being killed, suffering great bodily injury, or being raped, maimed, or robbed; and
2. You reasonably believed that the immediate use of deadly force was necessary to defend against that danger; and
3. You used no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger.²³

If you can prove all of the above facts, then you are not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in California.

Example: Paul and Julio get into an argument outside of a nightclub. Paul begins pushing Julio, and Julio fights back. Then Paul pulls a knife out of his back pocket and lunges toward Julio. Julio manages to wrest the knife out of his hands and, in doing so, stabs Paul in the chest with it. Paul later dies from his injuries. Julio could probably avoid an involuntary manslaughter conviction by arguing that he acted in self-defense.

2) The Killing Was an Accident

All cases of involuntary manslaughter are accidents in some sense because the killing is never intentional. Though as long as you were not acting with criminal negligence, then you should avoid a conviction based on the accident defense.²⁴

For the accident defense to work in California, the court must find that:

1. You had no criminal intent to do harm; and
2. You were not acting with criminal negligence at the time of the accidental killing; and
3. You were otherwise engaged in lawful activity at the time of the accident.²⁵

For example, if you drive over a pothole that appeared intact but was in fact defective – and it causes a fatal accident – you should not be held criminally liable. No reasonable person in your position would have known that the pothole was not maintained.

(Note that concealing an accidental death is its own crime in California under 152 PC.)

3) You Were Falsely Accused or Wrongfully Arrested

Maybe the victim’s family members or friends want to minimize their role in the death by blaming it all on you. Or maybe somebody wants to take revenge against you or otherwise harm you.

In some cases, false accusations occur when you are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the real perpetrator is trying to pin the blame on you because you were there. Fortunately, being “merely present” at the crime scene is not sufficient to sustain a conviction.

Typical evidence in these cases includes surveillance video, eyewitness accounts, GPS records, and forensic expert testimony.

4. Related Crimes

Murder

Murder under California Penal Code 187 PC is distinguished from manslaughter by one major factor: For a homicide to be murder, there needs to be some sort of “malice aforethought”—typically the intent to kill or disregard for human life.²⁶ Though if you kill someone by accident when committing a dangerous felony, you will be charged with murder instead of manslaughter under the “felony-murder rule.”²⁷

Potential prison sentences for a murder conviction can range from 15 years to life in prison.²⁸

Note that if the murder qualifies as “special circumstances murder” (for example, if the victim was a witness or police officer, or if the motive was financial gain), then prosecutors could pursue the death penalty.²⁹

Voluntary Manslaughter

Voluntary manslaughter under California Penal Code 192(a) PC is a killing that takes place “upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.”³⁰

Although voluntary manslaughter is an intentional killing, it is punished less harshly than murder because it is the result of the defendant’s understandably strong emotions in reaction to a provocation (such as walking in on a spouse cheating).

Voluntary manslaughter leads to stricter penalties than involuntary manslaughter: A state prison sentence of three, six, or 11 years,³¹ plus a “strike” on your record under California’s “three strikes law.”³²

CALIFORNIA LAW	Murder	Voluntary Manslaughter	Involuntary Manslaughter
Penal Code section	187 PC	192(a) PC	192(b) PC
Malice aforethought	Yes	No	No
Intent to kill	Yes	Yes	No
Premeditation	Yes (1st degree) / No (2nd degree)	No	No
Provocation or heat of passion	No	Yes	No
Criminal negligence	No	No	Yes
Sentencing	15 years to life (2nd degree) / 25 years to life (1st degree)	3, 6, or 11 years	2, 3, or 4 years
Possible defenses	Self-defense, defense of others, insanity, accident	Self-defense, defense of others, insanity, accident	Self-defense, defense of others, insanity, accident

Vehicular Manslaughter

Under California Penal Code 192(c) PC, vehicular manslaughter is almost identical to the crime of involuntary manslaughter. The only difference is that it involves driving a vehicle in a negligent manner or violating a traffic law, and thereby causing an accident where a person is killed. ³³

If you commit vehicular manslaughter with “gross negligence” (similar to the criminal negligence required for involuntary manslaughter), then the crime is called “gross vehicular manslaughter.” This may be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the prosecutor’s discretion.³⁴ The potential felony sentence is two, four, or six years in prison.³⁵

Though if you commit vehicular manslaughter with only “ordinary negligence,” then it is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in county jail.³⁶

We have seen cases where people try to collect on car insurance money by staging a minor accident which unexpectedly turns fatal. For example, you plan to sideswipe a telephone pole, but the impact causes you to lose control of the car, and you run over a pedestrian. In these situations, you would face charges for not only vehicular manslaughter but also insurance fraud.

Vehicular Manslaughter while Intoxicated

If you commit the crime of vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, then you will be charged under:

• California Penal Code 191.5(a) PC – gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated or
• California Penal Code 191.5(b) PC – vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated (with only ordinary negligence, not gross negligence).³⁷

Gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated is a felony with a potential prison sentence of four, six, or 10 years.³⁸ Meanwhile, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated is a wobbler with a maximum potential felony sentence of four years.³⁹

Assault

California Penal Code  240 PC makes it a crime to commit assault, which is the unlawful attempt – along with the present ability – to cause a violent injury to another human being. An example is throwing a rock at a person, but it ends up missing.

Simple assault is only a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and up to $1,000. The penalties can be doubled if the victim is an on-duty officer.

Though assault with a deadly weapon (ADW) in violation of 245(a)(1) PC is a wobbler. ADW can be prosecuted as either:

• A misdemeanor carrying up to 1 year in jail and/or $1,000 or
• A felony carrying 2, 3, or 4 years in jail.

In our experience, many involuntary manslaughter cases stem from simple assaults that escalate.

Battery

California Penal Code 242 PC makes it a crime to commit battery, which is the “willful and unlawful use of force or violence” on another person. Like assault, this is a misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and up to $1,000.

Though if the battery results in physical harm, the D.A. could then bring charges of battery causing serious bodily injury under Penal Code 243(d) PC. Like assault with a deadly weapon, this is a wobbler chargeable as either:

• A misdemeanor carrying up to 1 year in jail and/or $1,000 or
• A felony carrying 2, 3, or 4 years in jail.

As with assault, many simple battery cases escalate and result in involuntary manslaughter charges being brought.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is “involuntary manslaughter” in California?

Involuntary manslaughter under Penal Code 192(b) is an unintentional killing that happens when someone acts with criminal negligence or commits a non-felony unlawful act that leads to death.

What does “criminal negligence” mean?

It is more than a mistake or ordinary carelessness. It means acting in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury, where a reasonable person would have known the risk.

What’s the punishment for involuntary manslaughter in California?

It is generally a felony, as per Penal Code 193(b). The standard penalty is two, three, or four years in custody, and the court can also impose a fine (often up to $10,000, depending on the case).

Is a fatal car accident “involuntary manslaughter”?

Usually, no. Deaths caused by driving are typically charged as vehicular manslaughter under Penal Code 192(c) or, in more serious cases, another homicide offense rather than 192(b) PC.

Additional Reading

For more in-depth information, refer to these scholarly articles:

• What’s Wrong with Involuntary Manslaughter – Texas Law Review.
• Rethinking the Mental Element in Involuntary Manslaughter – The Journal of Criminal Law. 
• Criminal Law – Involuntary Manslaughter – Unlawful Act as Basis for Conviction – Montana Law Review.
• The Innocent Villain: Involuntary Manslaughter by Text – Michigan Journal of Legal Reform. 
• Involuntary Manslaughter and Assisting Drug-Abuse Injection – Journal of Criminal Law. 

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