Opinion ID: 2141968
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Distinction from Intentional Manslaughter

Text: Historically, depraved indifference murder had no application at all to one-on-one killings ( see generally Bernard E. Gegan, A Case of Depraved Mind Murder, 49 St John's L Rev 417 [1974]). Accordingly, in Darry v People (10 NY 120 [1854]), this Court held that a conviction for depraved mind [4] murder required conduct that endangered many people indiscriminately, reflecting cases in which the defendant did not wish to kill or injure any particular individual, but had no care for whether the life of any particular person was lost or not. Since the enactment of the revised Penal Law, however, we have recognized that in rare circumstances, depraved indifference murder can also be found in certain unintentional killings involving only a single individual. These limited cases are those in which  although the intent to kill is absent  the defendant's utter depravity in causing the victim's death warrants punishment in excess of that available for manslaughter. Such cases will arise only when the acts of the defendant are marked by uncommon brutality  coupled not with an intent to kill . . . but with depraved indifference to the victim's plight ( Payne, 3 NY3d at 271). To constitute depraved indifference, the defendant's conduct must be `so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so devoid of regard of the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes the death of another' ( People v Russell, 91 NY2d 280, 287-288 [1998], quoting People v Fenner, 61 NY2d 971, 973 [1984]). The vast majority of killings simply do not meet this standard. They are suitably punished by statutes defining intentional murder or manslaughter in the first or second degree or criminally negligent homicide. Depraved indifference murder is not a lesser degree of intentional murder. [5] Moreover, someone who intends to cause serious physical injury does not commit depraved indifference murder because the intended victim dies. By definition, [s]erious physical injury includes injury which creates a substantial risk of death, or which causes death (Penal Law § 10.00 [10]). Thus, one who acts with the conscious intent to cause serious injury, and who succeeds in doing so, is guilty only of manslaughter in the first degree. Otherwise, every intentional manslaughter would also establish depraved indifference murder  a result plainly at odds with the discrete classifications set forth in the statute. Since a defendant who intends to injure or kill a particular person cannot generally be said to be indifferent  depravedly or otherwise  to the fate of that person, we underscore what we said in Payne : a one-on-one shooting or knifing (or similar killing) can almost never qualify as depraved indifference murder (3 NY3d at 272). [6] A defendant may be convicted of depraved indifference murder when but a single person is endangered in only a few rare circumstances. Two fact patterns have recurred over the past four decades of experience under the revised Penal Law. First, when the defendant intends neither to seriously injure, nor to kill, but nevertheless abandons a helpless and vulnerable victim in circumstances where the victim is highly likely to die, the defendant's utter callousness to the victim's mortal plight  arising from a situation created by the defendant  properly establishes depraved indifference murder. Thus, in People v Kibbe (35 NY2d 407 [1974]), the defendants were properly convicted of depraved indifference murder after they robbed an intoxicated victim and forced him out of a car on the side of a dark, remote, snowy road, partially dressed and without shoes in subfreezing temperatures, where he was struck by a passing truck and killed. Similarly, in People v Mills (1 NY3d 269 [2003]), the defendant, without intent to harm or kill his victim, pushed a young boy into the water, watched him submerge without resurfacing (either because the boy had accidentally struck his head or because of an epileptic seizure), falsely informed his friends in response to their cries to help the victim that he was in fact swimming away, and abandoned the drowning boy to die. Second, although we have reversed depraved indifference murder convictions in most cases involving isolated attacks, we have held that the crime is nevertheless established when a defendant  acting with a conscious objective not to kill but to harm  engages in torture or a brutal, prolonged and ultimately fatal course of conduct against a particularly vulnerable victim. When a defendant's actions serve to intensify or prolong a victim's suffering, they bespeak a level of cruelty that establishes the depravity mandated by statute. Thus, in People v Poplis (30 NY2d 85 [1972]), the defendant committed depraved indifference murder when, albeit without any intent to kill, he caused the death of a 3½-year-old infant as a result of continually beating the child over a period of five days ( see also People v Best, 85 NY2d 826 [1995], affg 202 AD2d 1015 [4th Dept 1994] [defendant's repeated severe beatings of her nine-year-old son caused large open wounds resulting in blood poisoning and ultimately death by asphyxiation; depraved indifference murder established since defendant continued beatings though aware of child's condition]). Both of these categories of cases reflect wanton cruelty, brutality or callousness directed against a particularly vulnerable victim, combined with utter indifference to the life or safety of the helpless target of the perpetrator's inexcusable acts. We have also upheld convictions for depraved indifference murder in a few other extraordinary cases involving conduct that endangered only one person, where the evidence showed not just recklessness, but depraved indifference to human life ( see e.g. People v Roe, 74 NY2d 20 [1989] [defendant fired at point-blank range without knowing whether the bullet was a live or dummy round]). Where comparable facts are not shown, however, a jury is foreclosed, as a matter of law, from considering a depraved indifference murder charge whenever death is the result of a one-on-one confrontation. [7]