Opinion ID: 1386258
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: Felony Murder as a Predicate for Capital Punishment

Text: In the American justice system, constituting a disparate capital criminal adaptation, there are two paths to the death penalty. The first is the typical intent-driven premeditated killing. Note, Should Courts Use Principles of Justification and Excuse to Impose Felony-Murder Liability?, 19 Rutgers L.J. 451 (1988). The second is the dysfunctional category of felony murder where the malice or intent to kill is unnecessary to reach the death penalty plateau. People v. Hamilton, 46 Cal.3d 123, 249 Cal. Rptr. 320, 756 P.2d 1348 (1988), cert. denied 489 U.S. 1040, 109 S.Ct. 1176, 103 L.Ed.2d 238 (1989); King v. Com., 6 Va. App. 351, 368 S.E.2d 704 (1988). In the trial of Engberg, the prosecution started down both paths and then stepped back before jury submission to have the trial court instruct only on felony murder so that intent to kill was never considered by the jury. Cf. Price v. State, 807 P.2d 909 (Wyo. 1991). The dysfunction develops in result, since in most intentional death penalty cases, the factual events include both the intent and a corollary and separate non-homicide felony, while pure felony murder reaches a death penalty with only the felony and not the intent. Rosen, Felony Murder and the Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence of Death, 31 B.C.L.Rev. 1103 (1990). Actually, in the vast majority of reported death penalty cases whether characterized as felony murder or intentional, the homicide was factually established as intentional. Cf. Com. ex rel. Smith v. Myers, 438 Pa. 218, 261 A.2d 550 (1970). An Engberg type felony murder when intent to kill is not established comes within a minority of the thousands of reported death penalty cases, but within a vast array of potential candidates if this kind of felony murder is to be indefinitely extended to its full potential. Death penalty vulnerability if every felony homicide creates the death-prone status could, nationwide, annually number, if including driving violations, in excess of forty thousand per year. [40] Non-vehicular homicides now number around twenty-three thousand per year. Casper Star-Tribune (Casper, WY), March 25, 1991. To provide the death penalty for this number annually would require about three and one-half executions every hour, day and night somewhere in this country. It could become the greatest growth industry in the country and particularly since the federal government wants to join in the killing campaign. See Finkel, Capital Felony-Murder, Objective Indicia, and Community Sentiment, 32 Ariz.L.Rev. 819 (1990). See also Comment, The Cost of Killing Criminals, 18 N.Ky.L.Rev. 61 (1990). Realistically, only a small percentage of killings are not attended by some associative felony, whether involving financial gain or behavioral satisfaction. Excluding the vicarious thrill killer, perhaps the ego killers involving husband-wife-boyfriend, etc. stand as the only general exceptions to the included felony predominance in crime. Yet, in either of these exceptional circumstances, another felony offense may occur as often even a lesser included incident, such as breaking-and-entering, assault, fire arms violation, and so forth. The burden of this analysis is to perceive that the felony murder death case as here presented is an incongruity in most cases, since only pursued to eliminate a prosecutorial burden of proving malice and intent by substitution of the conclusive presumption for the death penalty exposure from associative conduct. It is also apparent that the legislature recognized this problem by almost completely changing statutory provisions for imposition of the death penalty by passage of Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 171 (1989). [41] In application of the Wyoming Constitution and analysis of the realistic posture of the thousands of present death cases since Furman, I would deny death penalty exposure, unless in felony murder the killing was found by the jury to be intentional or at least achieve Tison compliance if the actor was not an accessory or co-actor. Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed.2d 127, reh'g denied 482 U.S. 921, 107 S.Ct. 3201, 96 L.Ed.2d 688 (1987). In the present case, when the prosecution chose not to proceed to the jury with intent to kill, the State should have waived death penalty exposure for Engberg. [42] See Rosen, supra, 31 B.C.L.Rev. at 1169. The subject of felony murder as an American legal system phenomenon is not without criticism, analysis and comment. See 1 Model Penal Code & Commentaries, § 210.2 at 29 (1980), providing that felony homicide should only constitute death penalty murder if committed purposely, knowingly or recklessly under circumstances manifesting indifference to the value of human life; and Note, A Reasoned Moral Response: Rethinking Texas's Capital Sentencing After Penry v. Lynaugh, 69 Tex.L.Rev. 407 (1990). The further question, as earlier discussed by the majority death penalty opinion in conjunction with the doubling up factor, State v. Davis, 325 N.C. 607, 386 S.E.2d 418 (1989), cert. denied ___ U.S. ___, 110 S.Ct. 2587, 110 L.Ed.2d 268 (1990), is that the constituent felony by-passes intent to achieve felony murder and then proceeds automatically, as applied by single or dual aggravating factors, to the death penalty determination. Thus, society can achieve a death penalty for an offense which otherwise may not have been more than a voluntary or involuntary homicide in committing a major felony. Cf. DeShields v. State, 534 A.2d 630 (Del.Super. 1987), cert. denied 486 U.S. 1017, 108 S.Ct. 1754, 100 L.Ed.2d 217 (1988), found by the appellate court to be an execution-type slaying of a helpless victim in cold blood. Consider also the predecessor cases of Deputy v. State, 500 A.2d 581 (Del.Super. 1985), cert. denied 480 U.S. 940, 107 S.Ct. 1589, 94 L.Ed.2d 778 (1987), where seventy-nine separate stab wounds in one victim and sixty-six in another were incompatible with accidental occurrence or unintended death as invoking a culpable mental state; Whalen v. State, 492 A.2d 552 (Del.Super. 1985); Flamer v. State, 490 A.2d 104 (Del.Super.), cert. denied 464 U.S. 865, 104 S.Ct. 198, 78 L.Ed.2d 173 (1983), cert. denied 474 U.S. 865, 106 S.Ct. 185, 88 L.Ed.2d 154 (1985); and People v. King, 109 Ill.2d 514, 94 Ill.Dec. 702, 488 N.E.2d 949, cert. denied 479 U.S. 872, 107 S.Ct. 249, 93 L.Ed.2d 173, reh'g denied 479 U.S. 956, 107 S.Ct. 449, 93 L.Ed.2d 396 (1986), where felony murderer acted intentionally or knowingly in killing. See 1 Model Penal Code & Commentaries, supra, § 210.6. The basic thrust is demonstrated by Zimring & Hawkins, Murder, The Model Code, and the Multiple Agendas of Reform, 19 Rutgers L.J. 773, 783 (1988), where the authors believe that the model code mens rea doctrine is the very feature that makes the felony-murder rule attractive to prosecutors   . Elimination of the requirement to prove intent improves and simplifies homicide proof for murder status. Cf. People v. Land, 169 Ill. App.3d 342, 119 Ill.Dec. 955, 523 N.E.2d 711 (1988) (intent in the underlying felony); and Jones v. State, 523 N.E.2d 750 (Ind. 1988). The felony murder rule, as in part embraced in the preclusive death penalty case law and discussion, has separately engendered substantial critique in law journals. As we find in Roth & Sundby, The Felony-Murder Rule: A Doctrine at Constitutional Crossroads, 70 Cornell L.Rev. 446, 446-48 (1985) (footnotes omitted and quoting 3 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 57, 65 (1883); State v. Harrison, 90 N.M. 439, 442, 564 P.2d 1321, 1324 (1977); Packer, Criminal Code Revision, 23 U. Toronto L.J. 1, 4 (1973); People v. Aaron, 409 Mich. 672, 689, 299 N.W.2d 304, 307 (1980); and Jeffries & Stephan, Defenses, Presumptions, and Burden of Proof in the Criminal Law, 88 Yale L.J. 1325, 1383 (1979)): Few legal doctrines have been as maligned and yet have shown as great a resiliency as the felony-murder rule. Criticism of the rule constitutes a lexicon of everything that scholars and jurists can find wrong with a legal doctrine: it has been described as astonishing and monstrous, an unsupportable legal fiction, an unsightly wart on the skin of the criminal law, and as an anachronistic remnant that has `no logical or practical basis for existence in modern law.' Perhaps the most that can be said for the rule is that it provides commentators with an extreme example that makes it easy to illustrate the injustice of various legal propositions. Despite the widespread criticism, the felony-murder rule persists in the vast majority of states.    The United States thus remains virtually the only western country still recognizing a rule which makes it possible that the most serious sanctions known to law might be imposed for accidental homicide. That article examines two constitutional concepts as challenging the Eighth Amendment and Due Process: a presumptive device in criminal conviction ( Sandstrom ), or a form of criminal strict liability ( Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982) and United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 57 L.Ed.2d 854, aff'd 438 U.S. 422, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 57 L.Ed.2d 854 (1978), cert. denied 444 U.S. 884, 100 S.Ct. 175, 62 L.Ed.2d 114 (1979)), and in summary, states: The felony-murder rule arose from obscure historical origins and has developed haphazardly into a harsh and unjust legal doctrine. It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that two separate lines of constitutional doctrines, developing independently, have come together in such a way that it is impossible to conceptualize felony murder in a manner that does not run afoul of constitutional guarantees. Courts and commentators have extensively documented the rule's weak policy justifications. This Article has demonstrated that the rule's infirmities have finally reached constitutional stature. Roth & Sundby, supra, 70 Cornell L. Rev. at 492. [43] The confusion of philosophy engendered by the relatively few death cases of the nature of Engberg where the felony engineers the felony murder and then aggravates the offense to a capital status, provides the question whether the homicide was intentional, inopportune or accidental. The type normally reflected as intended homicide is evidenced by numerous cases. [44] The same persuasion was once adopted by the California Supreme Court in Carlos v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 35 Cal.3d 131, 197 Cal. Rptr. 79, 672 P.2d 862 (1983), but with jurist changes following an election campaign in 1986, was reversed in People v. Anderson, 43 Cal.3d 1104, 240 Cal. Rptr. 585, 742 P.2d 1306 (1987). As adopted for that state, intent to kill is not a necessary element of the felony murder special circumstance which only differentiates prosecutorial requirements from factual components. [45] The principal result of the intent rejection answer of Tison is that the available death penalty class is so numerically expanded that in result, it may lead to the total collapse of the Eighth Amendment limitation standard. Note, Reckless Indifference as Intent to Kill: The Disproportionality of Punishment After Tison v. Arizona, 20 Conn.L.Rev. 723 (1988). It is rationally anticipated that neither American society nor the judicial system at its worst can accommodate more than a limited number of death penalty executions and certainly not the number that will result from the intrusion of the non-intent felony murder upon the Eighth Amendment and Wyo. Const. art. 1, §§ 14 and 15. Significantly increasing the class of death penalty exposed miscreants will serve either or both to accelerate total abolition or limitation to offenses that are intent-defined to be death penalty justified. Perhaps the content of deleted intent for death penalty can be extracted from Lipkin, The Moral Good Theory of Punishment, 40 U.Fla.L.Rev. 17 (1988). Harm happened, so punishment should be self-imposed by voluntary formulation. This could achieve a procedure so that if death is caused, another should die to balance the scales, and whether for retribution, deterrence, or rehabilitation, we need not inquire. If to be applied to motor vehicle usage, the standard could both serve to limit population increase and provide a new growth category of industry  executions. For Engberg, I specially concur for reversal with a conclusion that felony constituents should not be recognized for aggravation circumstances in death penalty infliction unless intent to kill is proven. Engberg's prosecution failed to meet this standard. Specific and compelling authority is provided by the most recent case of State v. Ortega, ___ N.M. ___, 817 P.2d 1196 (N.M. 1991). Its decisive reasoning should now be adopted for Wyoming.