Opinion ID: 750665
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Constitutionality of Arizona's Felony Murder Statute

Text: 39 The LaGrands requested a second-degree murder instruction as a lesser-included offense to the felony murder charge. The trial court denied the request as Arizona felony murder law does not include any lesser-included offenses. State v. LaGrand, 153 Ariz. at 30-31, 734 P.2d at 572-73. The LaGrands challenge the court's refusal to give the lesser-included instruction on the basis that the ruling was contrary to the teaching of Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980), and thus violated the Constitution. 40 In Beck, the Supreme Court considered a unique Alabama statute under which the jury was given only a choice of conviction of capital murder or acquittal. The Supreme Court reversed Beck's conviction on the basis that the limited choices available to the jury impermissibly enhanced the risk of an unwarranted conviction. Id. at 637, 100 S.Ct. at 2389. The goal of the Beck rule ... is to eliminate the distortion of the factfinding process that is created when the jury is forced into an all-or-nothing choice between capital murder and innocence. Schad v. Arizona, 501 U.S. 624, 646-47, 111 S.Ct. 2491, 2505, 115 L.Ed.2d 555 (1991). 41 In the instant case, however, the all-or-nothing scenario condemned in Beck did not exist. As to the charge of murder in count one, the jury was told it could return verdicts of guilty of murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree or not guilty. The LaGrands were charged with first-degree murder. The jury was told that the crime could be committed as a felony murder or as premeditated murder. An instruction on second-degree murder was given, as was a possible verdict of second-degree murder as to Count One. The jury was not specifically told that second-degree murder was not a lesser-included offense to felony murder, although a close reading of the instructions could have led the jury to that conclusion. 42 The jury was also given the choice of convicting or acquitting the defendants of attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, robbery and kidnapping in the other counts. In the event the jury had found itself unable to agree on a conviction of first-degree murder, it would not have had to face the choice of simply acquitting the LaGrands. 43 Thus, the instructions in the instant case do not implicate the concerns of the Beck doctrine because the LaGrands' jury was not faced with the all or nothing choice presented in Beck. See Schad, 501 U.S. at 646-47, 111 S.Ct. at 2505 (no Beck error where instruction does not present jury with all-or-nothing choice between the offense of conviction (capital murder) and innocence) (quotations omitted).