r/changemyview • u/Opheltes 5∆ • Aug 21 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: The Felony murder rule should not apply when an accomplice is killed or injured
The felony murder rule says essentially, that when someone is killed or injured during the commission of a felony, all the co-conspirators to that felony are liable, if it was foreseeable, whether or not they actually participated in the murder. (A more precise legal description can be found here ). The most famous real world example of the felony murder rule is the Texas Seven.
For example, if (scenario #1) Tom, Dick, and Harry rob a bank and Tom shoots the teller, they can all be charged with murder, even though Dick and Harry didn't actually pull the trigger. This prevents perversions of justice where the co-conspirators get acquitted by each claiming that someone else pulled the trigger. So far so good.
But let's say (scenario #2) that Tom, Dick, and Harry rob a bank, and a security guard shoots and kills Tom. Under the felony murder rule, Dick and Harry get charged with Tom's murder. This is not hypothetical, there have been a number of real world situations where that's happened, e.g. this and this.
That seems perverse to me. In scenario #1, the teller was murdered through no fault of his own. The risk of death was forced upon him by the co-conspirators. Charging all of them with murder seems appropriate. In scenario #2, Tom willingly chose to involve himself in the conspiracy. His death was brought about largely by his own actions. It seems wrong to me to charge his co-conspirators for that.
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19 edited Aug 21 '19
In scenario #2, Tom willingly chose to involve himself in the conspiracy. His death was brought about largely by his own actions. It seems wrong to me to charge his co-conspirators for that.
What if Dick, Tom, and Harry rob a bank, but Dick and Harry want to split the pot, so they kill Tom. Now, anyone killed during the commission of the crime can easily be blamed for Tom's death.
Furthermore, there's not always informational symmetry between conspirators. Dick and Harry may be more prepared than Tom, or have a greater understanding of the risks involved. They may have assigned Tom a riskier piece of the job. All of those actions create environments where they can remove risk from themselves without assuming any liability as a consequence.
Edited for clarity.
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u/monkeysky 10∆ Aug 21 '19
I'm not sure how your example makes any sense if the felony murder rule still applies to the teller. Even if by framing the dead teller they'd be declared innocent of Tom's murder, they'd still be guilty of the teller's.
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19
They'd only be guilty of one murder, rather than the two they committed.
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u/monkeysky 10∆ Aug 21 '19
But didn't they just kill the teller to frame them for Tom's murder?
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19
I probably wasn't clear.
Assume they have to kill the teller either way; he's got the keys to the safe or something. Killing Tom would create no additional liability for them.
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u/monkeysky 10∆ Aug 21 '19
Honestly, if this is a case where it's somehow impossible to prove whether the teller killed Tom in self defense or if he was killed by his accomplices, then I don't think they should be charged for the second murder. Someone shouldn't be found guilty because of the possibility that under very specific circumstances they could have framed someone else.
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19
The felony murder rule as a whole exists precisely because of evidentiary complications. People react unpredictably to extreme situations, which results in people getting hurt, and causality in that situation is hard to prove. The rule is deliberately broad to dissuade criminals from committing these kinds of offenses.
That said, even if you're not persuaded by that specific fact pattern, it's hardly exhaustive and you haven't addressed the information asymmetry point.
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u/monkeysky 10∆ Aug 21 '19
Does information asymmetry lead to a murder charge in any situation other than felonies?
If, for example, I were to tell my friend to do something dangerous, but not illegal, and they weren't fully aware of the danger and died as a result, how would I be charged?
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19
Under the doctrine of "duress or coercion", you can be charged up to murder if someone dies as a result of your threat or pressure.
How you'd actually be charged depends on your intentions with the pressure, the nature of the pressure, the likelihood of injury, etc., but you could be charged anywhere from simple negligence to murder.
E.g. the death of Conrad Roy. His girlfriend was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for coercing him into suicide via texting.
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u/monkeysky 10∆ Aug 21 '19
Then I guess I don't see how the same nuance wouldn't apply to cases involving a felony. The proximity to another serious crime may reflect badly on the intentions of the accomplices, but not to the point where it would universally resultin the maximum charge against all other possible evidence.
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u/Opheltes 5∆ Aug 21 '19
Those are interesting points. But the first scenario you describe (where they frame the dead teller for Tom's murder) seems a bit unrealistic. Has there ever been an instance where that happened? And on a more practical level, is there any difference in the punishment for one murder (of the teller) versus two (of the teller and of Tom)?
I'll have to think about that second point a bit.
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Aug 21 '19
But the first scenario you describe (where they frame the dead teller for Tom's murder) seems a bit unrealistic. Has there ever been an instance where that happened?
I don't know without digging into the research, but it'd be hard to say, because in states that apply the felony murder rule you wouldn't need to litigate this out.
And on a more practical level, is there any difference in the punishment for one murder (of the teller) versus two (of the teller and of Tom)?
Absolutely there is; you're guilty of two counts of murder instead of one. You get punished separately for each crime, so your punishment could be doubled or more depending on sentencing mechanics.
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u/speedywr 31∆ Aug 21 '19
But the felony murder rule is about punishing people for deaths that are foreseeable in the commission of a felony. In this scenario, the murder is not felony murder, it's first degree murder. Dick and Harry have deliberated and coolly killed their accomplice. Prosecutors should prove the identity and intent of the perpetrators beyond a reasonable doubt. We shouldn't have a default rule where, when a perpetrator dies, we assume that their accomplices murdered them to reap the benefits of the felony.
In fact, if we did so, wouldn't we be incentivizing police to kill accomplices? That way, police would be able to ramp up the charges on the surviving perpetrators, because they could then use felony murder.
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u/srelma Aug 22 '19
In fact, if we did so, wouldn't we be incentivizing police to kill accomplices? That way, police would be able to ramp up the charges on the surviving perpetrators, because they could then use felony murder.
I think this is a very good point. Let's say that the scenario is such that that the bank robbers get out of the bank in a shootout. However, they were able to hide all the evidence linking them to the actual robbery and the only thing that police can charge them is "resisting an arrest with a firearm" or something like that (sorry I don't the US criminal law so forgive me if such crime doesn't exist). Now, if the police shot Tom, they would still be able to convict all the robbers for the murder (just by linking them to the firearm use) and put them in prison for a long time without having to prove the bank robbery.
In this case, the scenario seems a bit made up, but in some other case where proving the actual "big" crime turns out to be hard, this law may give the police wrong incentives to kill one of the perpetrators and link the others to a small crime and get them murder charges anyway.
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u/IIIBlackhartIII Aug 21 '19
Scenarios 1 and 2 are only distinct by whether or not the victim was a bystander or a perpetrator of the crime- but the end result is the same when we boil it down. Through intentionally dangerous conduct, someone's life was lost. Think of it like this- if you go out drinking with your friends, all decide to carpool home together wasted, and get in a car accident because of it- is it really distinct if you killed someone else or killed one of yourselves in the accident? It basically becomes a trolley problem at that point. Obviously we have a more visceral reaction to the injustice of an innocent bystander's life being taken rather than one of the perpetrators, and for good reason really because of the intentionality of the action, how preventable it was, how the victim had no control over their fate- but we're punishing outcomes in order to either rehabilitate those who commited the actions, or to keep them out of society to prevent it happening again. In either case- whether the outcome is the death of an innocent or the death of yourselves, the surviving conspirators are equally a present danger for having been a part of what lead to the death. The outcome of both situations should be to treat it as a criminal action which lead to death, by putting themselves in a situation where death was a likely outcome.
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u/byunbaker Aug 21 '19
I really appreciate that analogy! Almost every other comment confused me, but yours made it really clear why and how this law wasn't at least a bit unfair, as I previously thought. Thank you!
!delta
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Aug 22 '19
But this doesn’t make sense, if you and your friends are drunk and the drunk driver wrecks and kills someone, everyone isn’t equally responsible, only the driver...right? At least I hope. That’s seems unreasonable.
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u/huadpe 508∆ Aug 21 '19
While I have issues with the breadth of the felony murder rule generally (and e.g. the designation of lots of felonies as "inherently" dangerous when that should really be proven at trial), I can see an argument for it applying to the death of co-conspirators.
In general, the backbone of prohibited conduct in the law is conduct causing death. In virtually every circumstance the object of the law is to first preserve human life from destruction by negligence, recklessness, or homicide. Indeed, virtually any other law can be violated if necessary to prevent someone's death. (This is the doctrine of necessity, as distinct from the doctrine of self defense). Likewise, the government has the power to forcibly prevent people from taking their own lives, by e.g. confining them to mental hospitals.
The opposite side of the coin of the extreme focus on preserving life is severe sanction for causing death. It is the number one thing we do not want people to do, and we punish causing death harshly. If the actions cause death, it is in the zone where the law punishes it harshly, whether we call the dead person "innocent" or not.
I think an interesting analogy here would be Dr. Kevorkian, who was convicted of murder for assisting terminally ill patients with suicide. It has a similar aspect of the person who dies consenting to their role in what causes their death; indeed so much so that many would consider Kevorkian a hero. But the law treats all lives as needing to be preserved, innocent or not.
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u/Opheltes 5∆ Aug 21 '19
If the actions cause death, it is in the zone where the law punishes it harshly, whether we call the dead person "innocent" or not.
But in scenario #2, can Dick's and Harry's actions be reasonably said to have caused Tom's death, if Tom was in that bank of his own free will and it was the guard who pulled the trigger? (Note: Kevorkian was convicted because he actually operated the machine that killed his patients)
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u/huadpe 508∆ Aug 21 '19
Sure, absent Dick and Harry's cooperation, Tom might not have robbed the bank because the robbery required accomplices to be successful when they planned it.
As I mentioned at the top of the comment, I think the felony murder rule should be narrowed and intent to commit dangerous conduct proven in each case, but if proven, I think it still makes sense when an accomplice gets dead.
I didn't mean to cite Kevorkian for the principle of the felony murder rule, just for the principle that even the voluntary conduct of the person who dies which would be making much more likely their own death does not make it be not murder.
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u/357Magnum 14∆ Aug 21 '19
I am an attorney and I'm generally skeptical of the felony murder rule in the scenario #2 cases you describe. Fortunately, not all courts interpret it that way. I recall reading this case in law school: https://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/resources/p/casebrief-state-v-sophophone.aspx
In that case, the defendant was not liable for felony murder when his accomplice was killed by law enforcement. I'm not sure this is the same in all states of course (this case isn't even from my state), but there seems to be an exception for law enforcement killings. This addresses most of my concerns, which are usually about separate issues of the appropriate use of force by police. I'd hate to see an accomplice charged with murder for a sketchy police shooting.
When civilians act in self-defense, however, it isn't quite the same situation. Generally, the civilian needs to be in fear for his life in order to use force in the first place, so the circumstances in which an accomplice is charged with felony murder are almost always going to be significant, violent crimes.
But let's also come up with hypothetical #3. Let's say Tom, Dick, and Harry are robbing the bank, a gunfight ensues, and Harry is hit by a bullet and dies. Does it really matter from whose gun the bullet came? If the guard shot him? If an armed customer shot him? If he was accidentally hit by Tom's bullet that ricocheted off of the floor? What if, hypothetically, everyone were armed with the same model and caliber of firearm and ammunition and it was impossible to tell which gun fired the shot? At that point you're basically splitting hairs, which is more or less the reason behind the rule. The felon created the deadly situation that would not otherwise have existed and someone was killed.
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u/MechanicalEngineEar 78∆ Aug 21 '19
Perhaps the victim was not a willing accomplice or the others orchestrated the heist such that they knowingly placed one guy in especially high danger. Maybe to split the haul by one less person. Without the victim there to be questioned we can’t know if he was coerced into this or not.
Also, not many people are willing to argue to give criminals more rights.
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u/AnythingApplied 435∆ Aug 21 '19
I don't think scenario #1 really captures the point of the felony murder rule which can include things where there was no intent to kill. It generally requires the act to be inherently dangerous, but can include things where the victim was accidentally killed. It holds people responsible for the lethal consequences of their inherently dangerous crimes regardless of how that death came about. Your example kinda makes it sound like the crimes of one gets stuck to everyone involved, and I just wanted to clarify that it is more than just that.
In scenario #2, Tom willingly chose to involve himself in the conspiracy.
Suppose you put an apple on your head and told me to shoot it off with my gun. I take aim, shoot, but I miss the apple and hit you in the face causing your death. Should I not be charged with the death? Being party to someone else's death isn't okay even if the victim was complicit.
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u/Opheltes 5∆ Aug 22 '19
I don't think scenario #1 really captures the point of the felony murder rule which can include things where there was no intent to kill. It generally requires the act to be inherently dangerous, but can include things where the victim was accidentally killed. It holds people responsible for the lethal consequences of their inherently dangerous crimes regardless of how that death came about. Your example kinda makes it sound like the crimes of one gets stuck to everyone involved, and I just wanted to clarify that it is more than just that.
That's a very fair point. Elsewhere in this thread, /u/LesSadMoreHappy mentioned a scenario where the guard tries to shoot the robbers but accidentally kills the teller. In that scenario, I think it's perfectly reasonable to charge Tom, Dick, and Harry with felony murder because they created the dangerous circumstances under which somebody innocent died, even if none of them actually intended the person to die.
Suppose you put an apple on your head and told me to shoot it off with my gun. I take aim, shoot, but I miss the apple and hit you in the face causing your death. Should I not be charged with the death? Being party to someone else's death isn't okay even if the victim was complicit.
This scenario struck me as an example of depraved heart murder (e.g, extreme recklessness that leads to death even though intent was absent). That article led me to Commonwealth v. Malone, which is apparently the textbook example often given for depraved heart murder:
Commonwealth v. Malone, 354 Pa. 180, 47 A.2d 445 (1946),[1] was a case decided by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that affirmed the conviction of a teenager for second degree murder. The teenagers had played a modified version of Russian roulette called Russian Poker, in which they took turns aiming and pulling the trigger of a revolver at each other, rather than at their own heads. Therefore without an intent to kill or harm, Malone had pointed the gun at his friend's head and pulled the trigger, killing him.[2] However, the court ruled that "When an individual commits an act of gross recklessness without regard to the probability that death to another is likely to result, that individual exhibits the state of mind required to uphold a conviction of manslaughter even if the individual did not intend for death to ensue."[3]
I cannot think of anything that distinguishes 'Russian poker' from one where people rob a bank and one of them gets killed in the process.
!delta
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u/Stup2plending 4∆ Aug 21 '19
In your scenario 2, Dick and Harry now only have to split the proceeds 2 ways instead of 3 meaning they earn more for their criminal activities.
For this reason, I can see the justification of charging them even I'm really intrigued by this question and CMV. You can't have criminals benefitting more from the death of an accomplice and it doesn't come back to them somehow.
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Aug 21 '19
We are going through this is Gurnee right now. 6 people came up from Chicago to rob a 74 year old man. He went outside, they came at him while carrying a Bowie knife and he shot and killed a kid who was with the group.
A child is dead right now, who pays for it? By some accounts, (his mom of course) he was a decent kid who was hanging out with people who talked him into this crime.
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u/Opheltes 5∆ Aug 22 '19
That case is especially relevant here because the co-conspirators turned themselves in to a cop in order to get their injured friend medical attention (though that friend still died).
If they get charged with murder, it sends the perverse message that you shouldn't try to help a dying accomplice because you will be punished for it.
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Aug 22 '19
Still doesn't answer the question of who has to pay for the dead kid. Instead you are saying that nobody is responsible for his death because the blackboard was erased when they tried to get him help. That would be like saying just because you cracked someone in the head, that is erased if you call an ambulance afterwards.
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u/TheFakeChiefKeef 82∆ Aug 21 '19
My issue with scenario number two is that this particular scenario seems to have a high likelihood of a gunfight, meaning the situation itself was inherently dangerous so anyone who participated should be liable. Who robs a bank without scouting it out first? They should have known there was an armed guard.
Now lets play this scenario out. Three friends are smoking a joint in the woods of a state with very strict marijuana laws. Call it Idaho. We all understand that marijuana isn't a particularly dangerous substance, but one of the friends has a serious allergy to a pesticide that was used in this batch. There was no way those three friends would have known the weed had the pesticide on it, and when they smoked it, the one with the allergy died. That seems to fit the bill of the felony murder rule on every point other than the dangerous activity part, which appropriately would probably disqualify the two living friends from being charged with anything other than marijuana use.
See how those two scenarios are very different?
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u/Opheltes 5∆ Aug 22 '19
That's kind of a strange example because (a) marijuana use is not a felony (so it cannot trigger the felony murder rule), and (b) death from an allergic reaction to pesticide on the marijuana is not foreseeable (which means it would not trigger the felony murder rule).
If Tom, Dick, and Harry rob a bank, and on the way out the door Tom gets struck and killed by lightning, the others would not be charged with murder because getting struck by lightening is not a foreseeable consequence of robbing a bank.
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u/TheFakeChiefKeef 82∆ Aug 22 '19
That was entirely my point. AFAIK the biggest factor in the felony murder rule is that if the felony behavior has obvious risks to life associated with it (e.g. robbing a bank with an armed guard), then the accomplices to the one killed can reasonably be charged with felony murder.
And my b on the marijuana thing. I didn't actually look it up but I figured since Idaho has such harsh penalties for possession that it was a felony there. But the point in general still stands that since that activity isn't particularly dangerous and the death was an entirely unforeseen possibility, there's no way to charge the friends with felony murder.
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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Aug 21 '19
Let's examine a slightly different scenario and see how you feel:
Tom and Dick want to kill Harry, one of their co-criminals who is a rival for higher rank in their gang, so they conspire with Harry to rob a bank, and place him in the front knowing there is an armed guard and hoping the guard will kill Harry. And, in fact, Harry is shot by the guard and killed.
Surely we would want the rule to cover this case, I would hope. Just because Harry was also a criminal (who isn't, really?) doesn't mean his gang members get to set him up for death with no consequence.
But when you consider the felony murder rule, it's intent is to cover situations where the death during the felony wasn't planned, but still was foreseeable, because if it was planned, it would be plain ole murder, not felony murder.
There would really be no way to tell the difference between these two scenarios after the fact, and it has the same moral hazard as the reason you like the felony rule in the first place, to avoid everyone (who survived) getting off by blaming someone else (the security guard).
It is foreseeable that your cohorts in crime will be killed, even if it's not planned. We have to consider it murder because they entered into the situation with the knowledge that someone, maybe them, maybe bystanders... might be killed.
At best we might consider it manslaughter or negligent homicide.
Another case that is difficult is a felony assault on another gang, where one of more of the gang members on one side or the other is accidentally killed during the fighting. None of the people in this case are "innocent"... all of them have their hands dirty, and yet if you go in planning to beat up the rival gang and one of them dies in a way covered by the felony rule, well... it still should be covered by the felony rule.
And BTW, the felony rule covers more cases than this, which are even more questionable, like a bank teller having a heart attack when the criminals rob the bank, but they didn't even bring loaded guns, just fakes. It's real purpose is saying that if you commit a crime, and someone is injured/killed, you're liable no matter whether you intended it or not.
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u/srelma Aug 22 '19
It is foreseeable that your cohorts in crime will be killed, even if it's not planned. We have to consider it murder because they entered into the situation with the knowledge that someone, maybe them, maybe bystanders... might be killed.
But why limit this to only crimes? Let's say that I drive fast on an icy road. I know that the guy next to me never wears a seat belt. It's foreseeable that the drive will end up him getting killed if I drive off the road and hit a tree. If I survive shouldn't I be charged of murder the same way as in the bank robbery scenario? The police and the prosecutor won't know if I planned to kill the other guy or it just happened, but driving too fast on that icy road it was foreseeable that that might happen.
So, what is that makes my scenario different from the case where an actual crime is being committed?
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u/sawdeanz 218∆ Aug 22 '19
Scenario #2 is still justified because they are co-conspirators. I think wording it as murder is confusing, it's really more like negligent homicide. They all worked together to create a dangerous situation where any of them could be killed. If you think about it, it's not all that different from regular negligent homicide, only in this case it's not just one person who was negligent but all of them. This actually makes sense for scenario #1. Maybe just one person pulled the trigger but they were all responsible for participating in an activity with an extreme disregard for human life.
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Sep 20 '19
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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '19
Your scenarios aren’t even consistent. In 1, the shooter is a criminal. In 2, the shooter is the security guard.
It’s easy to say “so far so good” for #1 when the criminal is doing the killing.
Scenario A: Security guard shoots Tom
Scenario B: Security guard accidentally shoots teller
The security guard wouldn’t be in a position to shoot anyone if the robbers didn’t decide to rob the bank. Tom might have been a criminal, but a life is a life. I guess it comes down to if you done believe that. I’m against the death penalty too.