| Court: | Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 2nd District |
| Facts: | Long unhappy marriage, battery, threats, abuse. Shoots husband. |
| Posture: | Rehearing |
| Issue: | Whether the provocations offered would be sufficient to produce the same behavior in a reasonably constituted person. |
| Holding: | Yes, the severity and nature of the trouble was sufficient; manslaughter instructions should have been given. Remanded for a new trial. |
| Rule: | Gradations of blame recognize that homicide happens, and we can distinguish between an ideal person (the moral standard) and flawed real people on this basis. |
| Reasoning: | This is the direction things are headed/MPC. |
| Dicta: | Concurring opinion proposes an alternative to the legal fiction about intent and manslaughter. Also proposes an alternative to the "reasonable person" standard. It's more closely tied to sentencing than charging, perhaps, in the context of the Model Penal Code citation. |