California Legal Brief

The Rule of People v. Mijares is that a defendant's attack remains the but-for cause and proximate cause of death even when the victim suffers from serious preexisting medical conditions, under circumstances where the coroner testifies that the defendant's assault caused the death and the victim would have survived at least several more years absent the attack.

Appeal from judgment after jury trial in Superior Court, Los Angeles County.

Defendant Appellant was Mark Anthony Mijares — the defendant suffering from methamphetamine-induced psychosis who fatally attacked an elderly homeless man.

Plaintiff Respondent was The People — the prosecution seeking murder conviction for the fatal attack on Juan Cordova.

The suit sounded in criminal homicide.

The key substantive facts leading to the suit were Mijares suffered from substance-induced psychotic disorder and had used methamphetamine for a week straight without sleep before attacking Juan Cordova, an elderly, homeless, and infirm stranger in a health clinic parking lot on October 26, 2019. Mijares pummeled Cordova with a brick, punched and kicked him, covered his head with a plastic bag, and stabbed him in the neck, breaking his facial bones. Cordova never regained consciousness and died in the hospital on November 28, 2019. The coroner testified that while Cordova had grave liver and heart issues and would have died within 3-4 years from those conditions, the cause of death was the blunt force trauma and knife wound from Mijares's attack.

The procedural result leading to the Appeal: The trial court convicted Mijares of first degree murder after instructing the jury that an act causes death if it is a substantial factor in causing death, ruling that Mijares's attack was the cause of Cordova's death despite his preexisting conditions.

The key question(s) on Appeal: 1) Whether the trial court erred by failing to instruct on attempted murder as a lesser included offense based on causation issues; 2) Whether the prosecutor committed misconduct in closing argument by misstating the difference between first and second degree murder; 3) Whether the trial court abused discretion in its Pitchess review; 4) Whether Mijares received proper pretrial custody credits.

The Appellate Court held that no instruction on attempted murder was required because substantial evidence established that Mijares's attack was both the but-for cause and proximate cause of Cordova's death, as attackers take their victims as they find them and preexisting infirmities do not destroy criminal responsibility unless they were the only substantial cause of death.

The case is inapplicable when the victim's preexisting medical conditions were the only substantial cause of death, when there is evidence negating the defendant's actions as a substantial factor in the death, or when the chain of causation involves extraordinary and abnormal intervening circumstances that make the death freakish or fantastic.

The case leaves open questions regarding the precise boundaries of proximate cause in cases involving multiple concurrent medical causes and the extent to which specific types of preexisting conditions might break the causal chain in homicide cases.