CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE
TITLE 8. OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PERSON
CHAPTER 1. HOMICIDE
197. Homicide is also justifiable when committed by any person
in any of the following cases:
1. When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or
to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person;
or,
2. When committed in defense of habitation, property,
or person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence
or surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends
and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter the
habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any person
therein; or,
3. When committed in the lawful defense of such person,
or of a wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of
such person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit
a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such
design being accomplished; but such person, or the person in whose behalf
the defense was made, if he was the assailant or engaged in mutual combat,
must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle
before the homicide was committed; or,
4. When necessarily committed in attempting, by lawful
ways and means, to apprehend any person for any felony committed, or in
lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping and preserving the
peace.
198. A bare fear of the commission of any of the offenses mentioned
in subdivisions 2 and 3 of Section 197, to prevent which homicide may be
lawfully committed, is not sufficient to justify it. But the circumstances
must be sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable person, and the
party killing must have acted under the influence ofsuch fears alone.
198.5. Any person using force intended or likely to cause death
or great bodily injury within his or her residence shall be presumed to
have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily
injury to self, family, or a member of the household when that force is
used against another person, not a member of the family orhousehold, who
unlawfully and forcibly enters or has unlawfully and forcibly entered the
residence and the person using the force knew or had reason to believe
that an unlawful and forcible entry occurred.
As used in this section, great bodily injury means a significant
or substantial physical injury.