Appendix D Selected Statutes: Extreme Emotional Distress, Disturbance, or Heat of Passion

• Library: How to Try a Murder Case: Pretrial and Trial Guidelines for Prosecution and Defense (ABA) (2011 Ed.)

APPENDIX D Selected Statutes: Extreme Emotional Distress, Disturbance, or Heat of PassionAlabama

§ 13A-6-2, Murder

(a) A person commits the crime of murder if he or she does any of the following. . . .
(b) A person does not commit murder under subdivisions (a)(1) or (a)(2) of this section if he or she was moved to act by a sudden heat of passion caused by provocation recognized by law, and before there had been a reasonable time for the passion to cool and for reason to reassert itself. The burden of injecting the issue of killing under legal provocation is on the defendant, but this does not shift the burden of proof. This subsection does not apply to a prosecution for, or preclude a conviction of, manslaughter or other crime.

Alaska

§ 11.41.115, Defenses to Murder

(a) In a prosecution under AS 11.41.100(a)(1)(A) or 11.41.110 (a)(1), it is a defense that the defendant acted in a heat of passion, before there had been a reasonable opportunity for the passion to cool, when the heat of passion resulted from a serious provocation by the intended victim.
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(f) In this section,
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(2) "serious provocation"

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