Reported / Citable
Background
Mark Mijares had a long-term methamphetamine addiction that had progressed to substance-induced psychotic disorder. After a week of continuous methamphetamine use without sleep, he attacked Juan Cordova, an elderly, homeless, infirm stranger, in a Los Angeles health-clinic parking lot in October 2019. Mijares pummeled Cordova with a brick, punched and kicked him, covered his head with a plastic bag, and stabbed him in the neck. The attack broke Cordova’s facial bones. Cordova never regained consciousness and died in the hospital about a month later.
Cordova had grave preexisting heart and liver disease. The coroner testified that Cordova would have died from those conditions within three or four years even without the attack. The cause of death was the "accumulation" of the blunt-force and knife injuries combined with the underlying disease.
The jury was instructed under CALCRIM that to convict of first-degree murder, jurors had to find Mijares "committed an act that caused the death," that there could be "more than one cause of death," and that an act causes death only if it is "a substantial factor in causing the death" — defined as "more than a trivial or remote factor." The jury convicted of first-degree murder. Mijares appealed, arguing the trial court should have instructed sua sponte on attempted murder as a lesser-included offense, and raising several other claims.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District (Division Eight) affirmed the conviction (with a small remand for sentencing-credit correction). The court held the trial court had no sua sponte duty to instruct on attempted murder.
That duty arises only when an element of the charged offense is missing and substantial evidence supports the lesser-included offense. Here, no element was missing. Mijares’s attack — beating with a brick, suffocating with a bag, stabbing in the neck — was uncontroverted as a substantial factor in Cordova’s death. The coroner’s testimony established that the injuries directly caused the death; the preexisting heart and liver disease was an additional factor, not a replacement for the attack as cause.
The court applied the well-settled California rule that a defendant takes the victim as he finds him: a victim’s preexisting medical condition does not break the chain of causation when the defendant’s act is a substantial factor in the death. The fact that Cordova might have died from his diseases within several years anyway is irrelevant — the attack accelerated death by years and was a substantial factor in it. Attempted murder would have required evidence Mijares’s act did not in fact cause death. There was no such evidence.
The court also rejected Mijares’s other appellate arguments, including challenges to evidentiary rulings and to the jury’s first-degree murder finding. The only relief granted was a presentence-custody-credits correction the parties had jointly recommended.
Key Takeaways
- Attempted-murder lesser-included instruction is not required where the evidence uniformly establishes the defendant’s act was a substantial factor in death. The instruction is for cases where causation is genuinely disputed.
- Substantial-factor causation is broad. "More than a trivial or remote factor" is the threshold; the defendant’s act doesn’t need to be the only or even the primary cause.
- Eggshell-victim rule still applies in homicide. A victim’s preexisting fragility — even imminent terminal disease — does not insulate a defendant whose attack accelerated or contributed to death.
- Coroner testimony quantifying remaining life expectancy doesn’t help the defense on causation. It actually establishes that the attack shortened the victim’s life, supporting first-degree murder.
- Substance-induced psychotic disorder is not by itself a defense to first-degree murder, though it can affect deliberation and premeditation findings — neither of which Mijares successfully raised.
Why It Matters
For California criminal defense practitioners handling homicide cases involving victims with serious preexisting medical conditions, Mijares is a clear reminder that California’s substantial-factor causation rule is broad and the eggshell-victim doctrine still applies. Defense theories that try to attribute death to underlying disease will not get a lesser-included attempted-murder instruction unless the evidence genuinely supports a finding that the attack did not cause the death.
For trial judges, the case reinforces that the sua sponte duty to instruct on lesser-included offenses requires substantial evidence supporting the lesser charge — not just the theoretical possibility of an alternative cause. Where the evidence uniformly shows the defendant’s act was a substantial factor, no lesser-included instruction is required.