People v. Habibi CA2/4

INTRODUCTION

Twenty-one-year-old Malik Lamont Holman was stopped at a red light when appellant Hannah Angelina Habibi, driving drunk at roughly 80 miles per hour, rammed into the rear of his vehicle without braking, killing Holman. Habibi was charged with second degree murder, on the theory that she acted with implied malice in driving while intoxicated -- a theory of murder colloquially referred to as “‘Watson murder,’” after People v. Watson (1981) 30 Cal.3d 290 (Watson).1 (People v. Munoz (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 143, 152 (Munoz).) She also was charged with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, which requires only gross negligence, not malice. During the jury’s deliberations, the jury submitted several requests for clarification of the concept of implied malice, and one request for readback of a

1 In Watson, our Supreme Court reversed an order dismissing two counts of murder against a defendant who, as established at the preliminary hearing, had killed two people in a collision while driving drunk, holding that the defendant’s conduct might support a finding of implied malice at trial. (Watson, supra, 30 Cal.3d at 293-295.)

2 medical examiner’s testimony…