Opinion ID: 848860
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: analogous principles in supreme court

Text: In addition to being consistent with the robbery statute, Michigan case law, and the common law, the transactional view of robbery has been implicitly accepted by this Court in other contexts. While the majority asserts, correctly, that this Court has never recognized the transactional approach in the specific context of robbery, op. at 541, 648 N.W.2d at 169, this Court has adopted a transactional view of robbery in the context of felony murder, where the murder occurs after commission of the robbery. People v. Podolski, 332 Mich. 508, 515-518, 52 N.W.2d 201 (1952). There, the Court stated that the robber may be said to be engaged in the commission of the crime while he is endeavoring to escape and make away with the goods taken. Id. at 518, 52 N.W.2d 201.In Podolski at 515-518, 52 N.W.2d 201, this Court expressly adopted the reasoning of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Moyer, 357 Pa. 181, 190-191, 53 A.2d 736 (1947), which stated: It is equally consistent with reason and sound public policy to hold that when a felon's attempt to commit robbery or burglary sets in motion a chain of events which were or should have been within his contemplation when the motion was initiated, he should be held responsible for any death which by direct and almost inevitable sequence results from the initial criminal act.... Every robber or burglar knows that a likely later act in the chain of events he inaugurates will be the use of deadly force against him on the part of the selected victim. For whatever results follow from that natural and legal use of retaliating force, the felon must be held responsible. Further, the Podolski Court at 517-518 agreed with the reasoning asserted by the prosecutor, quoting from Wharton, Homicide (3d ed.), p. 186: Where a homicide is committed within the res gestae of a felony, however, it is committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, a felony within the meaning of such statutes. That the attempt to commit the felony was not far advanced does not lessen the offense. And a burglar who breaks into a building, or who shoots a person who discovers him in an effort to escape, cannot avoid punishment for murder in the first degree, upon the theory that the burglary consisted in breaking in, and was consummated before the killing. A burglar may be said to be engaged in the commission of the crime of burglary while making away with the plunder, and while engaged in securing it. So, a robbery within the meaning of a rule that a homicide committed in the perpetration of a robbery is murder in the first degree is not necessarily concluded by the removal of the goods from the presence of the owner; and it is not necessary that the homicide should be committed at the precise time and place of the robbery. [14] In my judgment, it is altogether reasonable to extend, by analogy, this reasoning with respect to felony murder for a killing committed after a burglary or after a robbery, to the case of an assault committed after an initial taking, but before the perpetrator's escape. In People v. Gimotty, 216 Mich.App. 254, 257-259, 549 N.W.2d 39 (1996), the Court of Appeals held that the defendant had not reached a place of temporary safety in his escape from the scene of retail fraud, defined in the chapter on larceny, M.C.L. § 750.356, and, thus, that the death of a child in a vehicle struck by the defendant's vehicle during a high-speed police chase from the store was sufficiently connected to the underlying offense to support felony murder. See also People v. Oliver, 63 Mich.App. 509, 523, 234 N.W.2d 679 (1975); People v. Smith, 55 Mich.App. 184, 189, 222 N.W.2d 172 (1974). Again, by analogy, these cases support the view that an assault following an ordinary larceny elevates the crime to robbery and that a perpetrator who uses that force at any time before reaching a place of temporary safety in an effort to retain the property or escape with the property can be charged with robbery. [15] Finally, we would observe that the transactional view of robbery is also consistent with the premises that underlie the greater culpability of the perpetrator who resorts to violence in an attempt to steal property. [16] It is not the victim, but the perpetrator who should bear the full responsibility for his actions. `Every robber or burglar knows that a likely later act in the chain of events he inaugurates will be the [attempted] use of deadly force against him on the part of the selected victim. For whatever results follow from that natural and legal use of retaliating force, the felon must be held responsible.'  Podolski, supra at 516, 52 N.W.2d 201 (citations omitted). The use of force by the perpetrator against the owner of property who discovers his deed is an act, the need for which should not take the perpetrator by surprise. The use of force in such a circumstance should not be viewed as unusual or uncommon, but rather as a typical incident of the crime of larceny. [17]