Opinion ID: 2329361
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Robert Brown's Felony Murder Conviction

Text: ¶ 29 The majority cites a single Court of Appeals case for its remarkable proposition that when a crime becomes an element of another crime, it takes on mystical properties that notify the defendant of all its elements. Majority at 189-90 (citing State v. Hartz, 65 Wash.App. 351, 354, 828 P.2d 618 (1992)). That case in turn cites three cases from this court. Id. But the cases from this court to which the Court of Appeals cites are all over 70 years old, trace back to a single decision in 1908, and rely on notice principles long abandoned by this court. ¶ 30 This court first held elements of the predicate felony in a felony murder charge need not appear in the information in State v. Fillpot, 51 Wash. 223, 228, 98 P. 659 (1908). In Fillpot, the court concluded that the specific elements of the predicate felony need not be laid out in a felony murder charge because [t]he [predicate] crimes of robbery and burglary ... are elsewhere defined in the criminal code and they therefore have a well-defined and legal meaning. Id. It was sufficient, according to the court, to merely state in the information the terms robbery or burglary as used in the felony murder statute because it met the statutory requirement that a person of ordinary understanding could know what was intended by going and looking up their elements elsewhere in the code. Id. ¶ 31 In 1908, criminal law was far less complex than today. The modern notice requirement of the essential elements rule is not merely statutory but is based on constitutional law and court rule. Kjorsvik, 117 Wash.2d at 97, 812 P.2d 86 (citing Const. art. I, § 22 (amend. 10); U.S. Const. amend. VI; CrR 2.1(b), recodified as CrR 2.1(a)(1)). [2] We have expressly rejected the idea that defendants must search for the rules or regulations they are accused of violating. Id. at 101, 812 P.2d 86 (citing State v. Jeske, 87 Wash.2d 760, 765, 558 P.2d 162 (1976)). Rather, both our state and federal constitutions require that  all essential elements of an alleged crime must be included in the charging document in order to afford the accused notice of the nature of the allegations so that a defense can be properly prepared. Id. at 101-02, 812 P.2d 86. Given these developments in our case law, the majority's determination that the State in a felony murder charge need not notify a defendant of which elements of the predicate felony it intends to try is not reconcilable with modern due process and notice jurisprudence. ¶ 32 The other cases cited by the majority are similarly a few steps behind the past several decades of case law. In the 1941 case, State v. Anderson, 10 Wash.2d 167, 180, 116 P.2d 346 (1941), [3] the most recent case cited by the majority, the court offered the following rationale for the majority's rule: Nor is [the information] defective in not stating in specific detail the facts and elements of the burglary or robbery upon which the crime of murder in the first degree is charged.... The state's case was necessarily based upon and built around the confession and admissions of appellant. We cannot conceive of any fact which the state, by way of bill of particulars or by way of making the information more definite and certain, could have furnished him that was not already locked up in his own breast. In other words, when a charge is based on the admissions of the defendant, the State need not provide proper notice in charging because the defendant has all the notice he needs locked up in his own breast. Id. But that is not the standard by which we judge the adequacy of the information today. To say no notice is needed because the defendant himself knows what he did is antithetical to modern principles of fairness and due process. Nor are those principles satisfied by a charge that lists an underlying crime as an essential element of another crime but fails to inform the defendant which elements of that underlying crime the State intends to try. ¶ 33 Federal cases applying the same constitutional principles conflict with the majority's analysis. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals specifically addressed the issue of notifying the defendant of the elements of a predicate felony while interpreting Washington law in the context of second degree felony murder predicated on a second degree assault charge: [The defendant] was presented with the dilemma of preparing a defense to the second degree assault upon which the felony murder was founded without knowing whether the State would proceed on the theory that the second degree assault was founded on the intent to injure under [former RCW 9.11.020(1) (1909) [4] ] or to enable or assist himself ... to commit any crime under [former RCW 9.11.020(2)]. To allow the State to charge in such nebulous terms and proceed to trial on either of these theories would in itself be violative of the principle of fundamental fairness on which due process of law is bottomed. The practical inquiry as to the sufficiency of the information ... reveals that on this basis alone, [the defendant] would not have received the requisite notice to adequately prepare his defense. Kreck v. Spalding, 721 F.2d 1229, 1233 (9th Cir.1983) (citation omitted). The fact that this analysis is dicta renders it no less potent an indictment of the rule in the cases relied on by the majority. ¶ 34 Other jurisdictions agree with the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court of Hawai`i expressly disapproved of Hartz, and held that where one offense requires the actual commission of a second underlying offense, in order to sufficiently charge the offense, it is incumbent on the State to allege the essential elements of the underlying offense; identification of the offense by name or statutory reference will not suffice. State v. Israel, 78 Hawai`i 66, 75, 890 P.2d 303 (1995). And the Illinois Court of Appeals has likewise held that where the commission of an underlying offense is a requisite for the commission of a second offense, the information must also contain the elements of the underlying offense. People v. Miles, 96 Ill. App.3d 721, 725, 52 Ill.Dec. 324, 422 N.E.2d 5 (1981). ¶ 35 The unfairness of a rule contrary to that endorsed by the Ninth Circuit and other jurisdictions becomes evident when applied in a context outside that of felony murder. In fact, this court soundly rejected the same arguments made by the majority in the context of second degree assault. In 1965, well after Fillpot and its progeny, we held that information charging second degree assault with the intent to commit a felony was insufficient. Royse, 66 Wash.2d at 557, 403 P.2d 838. There, like in Fillpot, the State argued that it was sufficient in an indictment for a statutory crime to charge the crime in the language of the statute. Id. at 556-57, 403 P.2d 838. We found that was not enough because the statute, in this instance, does not define the crime with certainty, and the rule only applies where the statute does define the offense which it creates. Id. at 557, 403 P.2d 838. More importantly, we continued: [T]he information must state the acts constituting the offense in ordinary and concise language, not the name of the offense, but the statement of the acts constituting the offense is just as important and essential as the other requirements of the information, such as the title of the action and the names of the parties. Id. Thus this court did not reverse the defendant's conviction only because the State had not named the felony that formed the basis for the second degree assault conviction. It expressly required not the name of the offense, but the statement of the acts constituting the offense, despite the fact that the offense was not actually charged but was a predicate to the second degree assault charge. Id. ¶ 36 Felony murder is not, for this purpose, meaningfully different from a second degree assault charge predicated on the intent to commit a felony. The defendant need not be charged with the underlying felony but the felony is itself an element of second degree assault. See 11 Washington Practice: Washington Pattern Jury Instructions: Criminal 35.11, at 467 (3d ed. 2008). It is incongruous to hold that the name of the offense is insufficient in the context of second degree assault but sufficient in the context of felony murder. And it is difficult to understand how a felony murder charge that refers to the predicate felony only as robbery, burglary, or first degree kidnapping comports with our requirement that the charging information `allege facts supporting every element of the offense.' Kjorsvik, 117 Wash.2d at 98, 812 P.2d 86 (emphasis omitted) (quoting Leach, 113 Wash.2d at 689, 782 P.2d 552).