Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/14/544.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 18:06:57+00:00

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THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. DAMIEN SCOTT et al., Defendants and Appellants.
Gordon S. Brownell and Robert E. Boyce, under appointments by the Supreme Court, and Laura Schaefer for Defendants and Appellants.
Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Assistant Attorney General, Linda C. Johnson and Sharon Wooden Richard, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted defendants Damien Scott and Derrick Brown of various crimes for their part in a drive-by shooting which resulted [14 Cal. 4th 546] in the death of one person and injury to several others. We must decide in this case whether the doctrine of transferred intent may be used to assign criminal liability to a defendant who kills an unintended victim when the defendant is also prosecuted for the attempted murder of an intended victim.
Under the classic formulation of California's common law doctrine of transferred intent, a defendant who shoots with the intent to kill a certain person and hits a bystander instead is subject to the same criminal liability that would have been imposed had " 'the fatal blow reached the person for whom intended.' " (People v. Suesser (1904) 142 Cal. 354, 366 [75 P. 1093] (hereafter Suesser).) In such a factual setting, the defendant is deemed as culpable as if he had accomplished what he set out to do.
Here, it was established at trial that defendants fired an automatic weapon into a public park in an attempt to kill a certain individual, and fatally shot a bystander instead. The case presents the type of factual setting in which courts have uniformly approved reliance on the transferred intent doctrine as the basis of determining a defendant's criminal liability for the death of an unintended victim. Consistent with a line of decisions beginning with Suesser nearly a century ago, we conclude that the jury in this case was properly instructed on a transferred intent theory of liability for first degree murder.
Moreover, defendants' exposure to a murder conviction based on a transferred intent theory of liability was proper regardless of the fact they were also charged with attempted murder of the intended victim. Contrary to what its name implies, the transferred intent doctrine does not refer to any actual intent that is "used up" once it has been employed to convict a defendant of a specific intent crime against an intended victim. Rather, the doctrine of transferred intent connotes a policy. As applied here, the transferred intent doctrine is but another way of saying that a defendant who shoots with an intent to kill but misses and hits a bystander instead should be punished for a crime of the same seriousness as the one he tried to commit against his intended victim.
In this case, defendants shot at an intended victim, missed him, and killed another person instead. In doing so, defendants committed crimes against two persons. Defendants' criminal liability for causing the death of the unintended victim may be determined on a theory of transferred intent in accordance with the classic formulation of the doctrine under California common law. Their criminal liability for shooting at the intended victim with an intent to kill is that which the law assigns.
The Court of Appeal correctly concluded that the trial court's instruction to the jury on transferred intent as it related to the charge of murder was [14 Cal. 4th 547] proper. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal affirming, with minor modification, the judgments of conviction.
In May 1991, Calvin Hughes became the target of a family vendetta. While Hughes and Elaine Scott were romantically involved, Hughes and his sister, Eugenia Griffin, shared Scott's apartment. After the bloom faded from the romance, relations between Hughes and Scott became increasingly acrimonious and one night Hughes and Scott got into a physical altercation. Defendant Damien Scott and codefendant Derrick Brown, Scott's adult sons, came to her aid and forced Hughes and Griffin out of the apartment.
A few days later, Hughes borrowed Griffin's car and, accompanied by his friend Gary Tripp, returned to Scott's place to retrieve his personal belongings. When Scott attempted to bar his entry, Hughes forced his way into the apartment and gathered his things. On his way out, he heard Scott threaten to page her sons.
Hughes and Tripp drove to Jesse Owens Park in South Los Angeles to meet Griffin. Nathan Kelley and his teenage son, Jack Gibson, had parked nearby. As Hughes stood beside Kelley's car, talking to him through the open window, three cars entered the park. Gunfire erupted. Defendant Scott and codefendant Brown, riding in the first car, sprayed the area with bullets. Hughes took cover behind the front bumper of Kelley's car. When there was a lull in the shooting, Hughes sprinted toward the park gym. A renewed hail of gunfire followed him. A bullet hit the heel of his shoe. The shooting stopped when Hughes took cover behind the gym. The gunmen left the park.
In the aftermath, the victims discovered both Kelley's and Griffin's vehicles had been riddled with bullets; Gary Tripp had been shot in the leg and buttocks; and Jack Gibson had been killed when a bullet struck him in the head.
In an amended multicount information, defendant Scott and codefendant Brown were jointly charged with the murder of Jack Gibson (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a); all further statutory references are to this code); attempted murder of Calvin Hughes and Gary Tripp (§§ 664, 187, subd. (a)); fn. 1 and assault with a firearm on Calvin Hughes, Nathan Kelley, Gary Tripp, and Eugenia Griffin. (§ 245, subd. (a)(2).) As to each count, the information [14 Cal. 4th 548] alleged defendants personally used a firearm within the meaning of section 12022.5, subdivision (a)(1). It was further alleged, as to the murder and attempted murder counts, that defendants were armed with a firearm within the meaning of section 12022, subdivision (a)(1).
At a second trial following mistrial due to a deadlocked jury, the prosecutor sought to establish that Jack Gibson was the unintended victim of defendants' premeditated and deliberate intent to kill Calvin Hughes. At the prosecution's request, the trial court instructed the jury on transferred intent using a modified version of CALJIC No. 8.65. The court stated as follows: "As it relates to the charge of murder, where one attempts to kill a certain person, but by mistake or inadvertence kills a different person, the crime, if any, so committed is the same as though the person originally intended to be killed, had been killed." The jury was also instructed on second degree express malice and implied malice murder.
The jury convicted both defendants of second degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, and two counts of assault with a firearm. It found true all of the firearm allegations. The jury acquitted defendants of two counts of assault with a firearm that had been charged in the alternative to the counts of attempted murder.
Defendants appealed their convictions and, in a published decision, the Court of Appeal modified and affirmed the judgments of conviction. In relevant part, the Court of Appeal rejected defendants' argument that a transferred intent instruction only applies when the prosecution elects to charge the defendant with first degree murder of the unintended victim, and not also with attempted murder of the intended victim.
We granted defendant Scott's petition for review.
The jury convicted defendants of second degree murder for fatally shooting the unintended victim. It cannot be determined from the verdicts, however, whether the jury relied on the transferred intent instruction to convict defendants of second degree murder on an express malice theory, or whether it reached that verdict through a finding of implied malice. Consequently, it is necessary to decide whether a transferred intent instruction was properly given in this case.
Suesser, supra, 142 Cal. 354, and a number of other California decisions present the classic "bad aim" cases in which a defendant who attempts to kill one individual and inadvertently kills a bystander instead is convicted of murder on the theory of transferred intent. Courts in these cases have uniformly rejected the defendants' argument that their convictions were based on insufficient evidence of intent to kill. (See People v. Sutic (1953) 41 Cal. 2d 483, 491-492 [261 P.2d 241] [first degree murder of child inadvertently killed in dispute over egg bill]; People v. Clayton (1967) 248 Cal. App. 2d 345, 349 [56 Cal. Rptr. 413] [second degree murder of bystander killed in racially motivated attempt on life of pedestrian]; People v. Walker (1946) 76 Cal. App. 2d 10, 14 [172 P.2d 380] [first degree murder of bystander killed inadvertently when pool hall argument escalated into violence].)  Here, the evidence adduced at trial indicates that defendants shot at an intended victim, missed him, and killed another person instead. Consistently with Suesser and its progeny, we conclude that in light of this evidence, the trial court properly instructed the jury according to CALJIC No. 8.65 that "[w]hen one attempts to kill a certain person, but by mistake or inadvertence kills a different person, the crime, if any, so committed is the same as though the person originally intended to be killed, had been killed."
Nor is application of the transferred intent doctrine under these circumstances foreclosed by the prosecutor having charged defendants with attempted murder of the intended victim. Contrary to what its name implies, the transferred intent doctrine does not refer to any actual intent that is capable of being "used up" once it is employed to convict a defendant of a specific intent crime against the intended victim.
Courts and commentators have long recognized that the notion of creating a whole crime by "transferring" a defendant's intent from the object of his assault to the victim of his criminal act is, as Dean Prosser aptly describes it, a "bare-faced" legal fiction. (Prosser, Transferred Intent (1967) 45 Tex. L.Rev. 650, 650; see Czahara, supra, 203 Cal.App.3d at p. 1474; see also Husak, Transferred Intent (1996) 10 Notre Dame J.L., Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 65, 83-86; Ritz, Felony Murder, Transferred Intent, and the Palsgraf Doctrine [14 Cal. 4th 551] in the Criminal Law, supra, 16 Wash. & Lee L.Rev. at p. 171; People v. Calderon (1991) 232 Cal. App. 3d 930, 935 [283 Cal. Rptr. 833] (hereafter Calderon).) The legal fiction of transferring a defendant's intent helps illustrate why, as a theoretical matter, a defendant can be convicted of murder when she did not intend to kill the person actually killed. The transferred intent doctrine does not, however, denote an actual "transfer" of "intent" from the intended victim to the unintended victim. (Cf. Prosser, Transferred Intent, supra, at p. 653.) Rather, as applied here, it connotes a policy-that a defendant who shoots at an intended victim with intent to kill but misses and hits a bystander instead should be subject to the same criminal liability that would have been imposed had he hit his intended mark. (Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law (2d ed. 1960) p. 145.) It is the policy underlying the doctrine, rather than its literal meaning, that compels the conclusion that a transferred intent instruction was properly given in this case.
Conversely, reliance on a transferred intent theory of liability for the first degree murder of the unintended victim did not prevent the prosecutor from also charging defendants with attempted murder of the intended victim. As previously recounted, defendants shot at an intended victim, missed him, and killed another individual instead. In their attempt to kill the intended victim, defendants committed crimes against two persons. They may be held accountable for the death of the unintended victim on a theory of transferred intent. Their criminal liability for attempting to kill the intended victim is that which the law assigns, here, in accordance with the attempted murder statute, sections 664 and 187, subdivision (a).
Because the facts of the case presented here do not involve the fatal shooting of both an intended and unintended victim, we have no occasion to determine whether Birreuta's reasoning or its conclusion is correct, and we decline to express a view on that decision. As previously discussed, the evidence at trial in this case was that defendants' attempt to kill one person [14 Cal. 4th 553] resulted in the killing of an innocent bystander. Under these circumstances, Suesser and its progeny have uniformly applied the common law doctrine of transferred intent to assign a defendant's criminal liability for the killing of the unintended victim. Consistent with the line of decisions beginning with Suesser nearly a century ago, because defendants shot at one person with an intent to kill, missed him, and killed a bystander instead, they may be held accountable for a crime of the same seriousness as the one they would have committed had they hit their intended target.
Defendant Scott raises two additional arguments. He contends first the trial court erred by instructing the jury the transferred intent doctrine applied to the charge of attempted murder of Gary Tripp. As the Court of Appeal correctly noted, however, the trial court did not give such an instruction. According to the transcript, when instructing the jury on count 1, the murder of Jack Gibson, the trial court first explained the elements of murder. The court then defined first and second degree murder. Following these explications of the law, the trial court instructed the jury on the transferred intent doctrine "[a]s it relates to the charges of murder ...." The court then instructed the jury on the elements of attempted murder.
The record makes clear the trial court's transferred intent instruction was given in relation to the charge of murder in count 1. The jury could not have reasonably understood the instruction to have any application to the counts relating to attempted murder. Defendant Scott's claim is unsupported by the record and is therefore rejected.
Defendant Scott also contends the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the doctrine of transferred intent in connection with the counts charging assault with a firearm on Calvin Hughes, Nathan Kelley, Gary Tripp, and Eugenia Griffin. Defendant raises this argument for the first time in his opening brief.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal affirming the judgments of conviction is affirmed.
In my view, the time has come to reconsider one aspect of the law of murder, specifically, the antique common law rule variously referred to as "transferred malice" or, more usually if less accurately, "transferred intent."
I would not abrogate the "transferred intent" rule simply because it is a legal fiction. The law is filled with devices of this sort. It could hardly operate if they were all absent.
For the reasons stated above, I would abrogate the "transferred intent" rule.

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