Opinion ID: 1346679
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Cause in Georgia's Homicide Statutes Means Proximate Cause

Text: 2. The felony murder statute provides that [a] person also commits the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony, he causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice. OCGA § 16-5-1(c) (emphasis added). As in Crane , the question in this case is whether a defendant who commits a felony whose intended victim kills a co-conspirator causes that death. The answer should be straightforward. Georgia is a proximate cause state. When another meaning is not indicated by specific definition or context, the term cause is customarily interpreted in almost all legal contexts to mean proximate cause[t]hat which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces injury, and without which the result would not have occurred. Black's Law Dictionary 1103 (5th ed. 1979). Thus, this Court has explained that proximate cause is the standard for criminal cases in general. See, e.g., Skaggs v. State, 278 Ga. 19, 19-20, 596 S.E.2d 159 (2004) (In a criminal case, proximate cause exists when the accused's `act or omission played a substantial part in bringing about or actually causing the (victim's) injury or damage and... the injury or damage was either a direct result or a reasonably probable consequence of the act or omission.' (citations omitted)). We have also said that proximate cause is the standard for homicide cases in general. See, e.g., James v. State, 250 Ga. 655, 655, 300 S.E.2d 492 (1983) (In Wilson v. State, 190 Ga. 824, 829, 10 S.E.2d 861 (1940), we set out the following test for determining causation in homicide cases: `Where one inflicts an unlawful injury, such injury is to be accounted as the efficient, proximate cause of death, whenever it shall be made to appear, either that (1) the injury itself constituted the sole proximate cause of the death; or that (2) the injury directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death; or that (3) the injury materially accelerated the death, although proximately occasioned by a pre-existing cause.'). Consistent with this general rule, we have held in many cases and for many decades that proximate causation is the standard for murder cases prosecuted under the murder statute, now codified as OCGA § 16-5-1. Thus, we have long held, in numerous cases, that proximate causation is the test for malice murder, a crime defined using the identical he ... causes phrasing. See OCGA § 16-5-1(a) (A person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being.). [1] Finally, with respect to the statutory text at issue in this case, and in full accord with the general rule for criminal and homicide cases and with our construction of the identical language in subsection (a) of the same statute, we have repeatedly held, before and after Crane , that the phrase he causes in OCGA § 16-5-1(c) establishes proximate causation as the standard for liability in felony murder cases. [2] Indeed, in virtually all of Georgia's many homicide and feticide statutes, including the frequently charged voluntary and involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide statutes, the General Assembly has employed the same or very similar causation phrasing. [3] And to the extent those statutes have been interpreted by Georgia's appellate courts, once again the term cause has been regularly construed as requiring proximate causation. [4] As an original matter, therefore, we would decide this case simply by applying the customary legal meaning of cause, which is supported by the ample precedent interpreting the felony murder provision at issue, its identical sister provision in the murder statute, and identical or substantially similar provisions in many other homicide statutes. We would hold that the phrase he causes as used in OCGA § 16-5-1(c) requires the State to prove that the defendant's conduct in the commission of the underlying felony proximately caused the death of another person. In the context of this case, proximate causation would exist if (to use the rule for felony murder that the Court stated a year after deciding Crane ) the felony the defendants committed directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death, Durden, 250 Ga. at 329, 297 S.E.2d 237, or if (to use language from a case decided 16 years before Crane ) `the homicide [was] committed within the res gestae of the felony' ... and is one of the incidental, probable consequences of the execution of the design to commit the robbery, Jones, 220 Ga. at 902, 142 S.E.2d 801 (citations omitted). Whether the evidence in this case would establish such proximate causation beyond a reasonable doubt is a harder question, in part because the stipulated facts we have before us are summary and the issue of proximate causation is so fact-intensive. That is why proximate cause determinations are generally left to the jury at trial. See McGrath, 277 Ga.App. at 829, 627 S.E.2d 866 (What constitutes proximate cause is `undeniably a jury question and is always to be determined on the facts of each case upon mixed considerations of logic, common sense, justice, policy, and precedent.' (citation omitted)). The defendants here planned an armed robbery of someone they believed to be a drug dealer, who also turned out to be armed, an occurrence not unusual among drug dealers. When their co-conspirator Daniels approached the victim with a handgun to execute the robbery, the victim defended himself and killed Daniels. Perhaps more detailed evidence would show that, despite the dangerous and violent nature of armed robbery and drug dealing, circumstances existed that made the fatal result of the defendants' felonious conduct improbable in this case, or made the drug dealer victim's actions an efficient intervening cause. On the limited record before us, however, a jury could rationally conclude that the defendants' felonies played a substantial part in bringing about their accomplice's death when they confronted at gunpoint a drug dealer, whose deadly response could be viewed as a reasonably probable consequence of their acts. Skaggs, 278 Ga. at 19-20, 596 S.E.2d 159 (citations and punctuation omitted). Thus, as an original matter, we would have little hesitation reversing the trial court's order and remanding the case for trial and decision by a jury properly charged on causation using language adapted from our proximate cause homicide cases.