Question: Did the trial judge err? Support your opinion with the Trejo case and at least one other source with your 200-word-or-less response.

Cultural Provocation

Oscar Trejo was quarreling with his cousin Ricardo Acosta. Both were intoxicated. After some friendly insults, Rosales insulted Trejo's mother by referring to her as a prostitute. Trejo broke a beer bottle on the sidewalk and threatened to "stick" Rosales unless Rosales stopped making such insults. When Rosales again called Trejo the "son of [a] whore mother," Trejo stabbed Rosales in the neck with the broken bottle. Rosales bled to death before he reached a hospital. At his trial for murder, Trejo's defense was that, although he killed his cousin, he was guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder. He argued that Rosales's insults aroused a heat of passion in him that negated the malice necessary for second degree murder. He presented expert evidence that an accusation of prostitution by one's own mother in Trejo's Mexican culture was likely to result in violence. He also tried to argue that references to Trejo's mother as a prostitute were especially inflammatory because certain members of his family had been prostitutes. The trial judge did not permit him to make the latter argument, holding that it was irrelevant to a provocation defense.

See People v. Trejo, 2008 WL 2132367 (Cal.App. 2 Dist. 2008), cert. denied, 556 U.S. 1108, 129 S.Ct. 1589, 173 L.Ed.2d 682 (2009).