I have a murder trial next week in which the Defendant is going to argue that he killed his brother in a moment of sudden passion.

Anybody have any pointers, war stories, or voir dire suggestions for a sudden passion case?

This is a first for me.

One of the things I work on in those types of cases is to look for all the evidence I can on premeditation and/or planning of the crime by the defendant. It's going to be dificult for him to claim it was sudden passion if he had planned it several weeks or had confided in someone else what he was planning to do. Also, motive can help overcome that.

Ed Lane

1.Sudden passion = a reasonable, common, ordinary tempered person would be also kill the victim; this is what the statute requires. In today's society, a jury is going to require a extreme scenario for a defendant to convince a jury of such. A heated argument hardly qualifies. If the scenario that occurred in your case is a common one (heated argument, disagreement, squabble, yelling, swearing, physical violence), think how mant times you may have been in such a situation but never killed the person, then think how many of the jurors have been in the same position and never killed someone,and then think how many times the defendant has been in such and not killed someone - and if they didn't, it could hardly be considered "adequate cause".

Thank you both for your replies

You're welcome. I would be interested in hearing how your trial turns out.

Ed Lane