Pen. Code, § 189.5 · Chapter 1. Homicide
Pen. Code, § 189.5
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Upon a trial for murder, the commission of the homicide by the defendant being proved, the burden of proving circumstances of mitigation, or that justify or excuse it, devolves upon the defendant, unless the proof on the part of the prosecution tends to show that the crime committed only amounts to manslaughter, or that the defendant was justifiable or excusable.
(b) Nothing in this section shall apply to or affect any proceeding under Section 190.3 or 190.4.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Added by Stats. 1989, Ch. 897, Sec. 16.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=189.5.
- Text hash
- sha256 188804d2cb4d04a6385327792fec64d4184feafa8310d5233da29b610c3dfeb4
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
This section cites
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