Opinion ID: 2085062
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: People v Miller

Text: Miller barged uninvited into Fennell's apartment to assault him with a spray can (apparently to disable him with choking gas) and a butcher knife, and wound up killing Fennell's roommate, Aleem, who came to Fennell's aid. In other words, the facts were essentially indistinguishable from those of our Good Samaritan cases, such as Wagner, Patini and Giblin ( see also People v Luscomb, 292 NY 390 [1944]). The statute under which Miller was prosecuted was, however, quite different as was the People's theory. Miller was indicted for and convicted of, among other things, felony murder predicated on burglary to commit an assault. The trial court set aside this conviction on the ground that the People had not established burglary. The trial court, the majority in the Appellate Division and Miller all subscribed to the view that assault, the target crime of the burglary, was actually the underlying felony; therefore, the conviction could not stand because the felony murder statute, Penal Law § 125.25 (3), did not list assault as a predicate crime. Accordingly, we phrased the issue upon appeal as whether a burglary based upon the crime of assault can properly serve as the predicate for a felony-murder conviction ( Miller, 32 NY2d at 158). As we correctly saw it, Miller was urging us to extend the merger doctrine so that neither the assault against Fennell nor the assault against Aleem would qualify as the target crime of the burglary. This we refused to do, noting that the considerations prompting us to announce the merger doctrine in the first place were no longer germane because the Legislature had amended the Penal Law to remove the fundamental defect that merger was designed to cure ( id. at 159). Specifically, under the old felony murder statutes (section 1044 [2] of the former Penal Law and its predecessors) any felony, including assault, could be the predicate for murder. Thus, [s]ince, a fortiori, every homicide, not excusable or justifiable, occurs during the commission of assault, every homicide would constitute a felony murder ( Miller, 32 NY2d at 160). The Legislature remedied this fundamental defect in the revised Penal Law (Penal Law § 125.25 [3]), however, by enumerating specific felonies, not including assault and all involving violence or substantial risk of physical injury, which were the predicate crimes for felony murder ( id. ). The legislative purpose for this limitation was `to exclude from felony murder, cases of accidental or not reasonably foreseeable fatality occurring in an unlikely manner in the course of a non-violent felony' ( id. [citation omitted]). We further describedin detailthe Legislature's obvious motivation or purpose for including burglary in the list of enumerated predicate crimes for felony murder: [P]ersons within domiciles are in greater peril from those entering the domicile with criminal intent, than persons on the street who are being subjected to the same criminal intent. Thus, the burglary statutes prescribe greater punishment for a criminal act committed within the domicile than for the same act committed on the street. Where, as here, the criminal act underlying the burglary is an assault with a dangerous weapon, the likelihood that the assault will culminate in a homicide is significantly increased by the situs of the assault. When the assault takes place within the domicile, the victim may be more likely to resist the assault; the victim is also less likely to be able to avoid the consequences of the assault, since [the] paths of retreat and escape may be barred or severely restricted by furniture, walls and other obstructions incidental to buildings. Further, it is also more likely that when the assault occurs in the victim's domicile, there will be present family or close friends who will come to the victim's aid and be killed ( id. at 160-161). Since the Legislature did not exclude from the definition of burglary, a burglary based upon the intent to assault, but intended that the definition be `satisfied if the intruder's intent, existing at the time of the unlawful entry or remaining, is to commit any crime' ( id. at 161 [citation omitted; emphasis in original]), we concluded that any burglary, even one premised on an intent to assault, could support a felony murder conviction. Tellingly, in Miller we also expressly reject[ed] the reasoning and holding of People v Wilson (1 Cal 3d 431, 462 P2d 22 [1969]) ( Miller, 32 NY2d at 161 n 3). Along with its California progeny, Wilson anchors the majority's holding that capital felony murder predicated on burglary must have a criminal objective independent of intentional murder. In Wilson, the defendant, armed with a shotgun, broke a glass window in the outside door of his estranged wife's apartment building and entered her apartment, where she and three men were present. Initially, the defendant shot two of the men, killing one. He placed the muzzle of his shotgun against the door of the bathroom into which his wife had fled in a futile search for refuge, and shot the door off its hinges. The defendant's wife was found dead in the bathtub, having been shot twice in the chest at close range. The defendant was eventually found guilty of first-degree felony murder of his wife based on the crime of burglary, and second-degree felony murder of the other victim, based on assault with a deadly weapon. [8] The California Supreme Court reversed both convictions with merger as the rationale. As to the second-degree felony murder count, this result followed directly from traditional merger principles, adopted by the court in People v Ireland (70 Cal 2d 522, 539-540, 450 P2d 580, 589-590 [1969] [second-degree felony murder improperly predicated on crime of assault with a deadly weapon because this felony was an integral part of the homicide]). The court reversed the first-degree murder count because the burglary was not independent of the assault, however, and thereby expanded merger. Moreover, in support of this expansion, the court purported to follow New York merger doctrine. Specifically, the court noted that in Ireland (70 Cal 2d at 540, 450 P2d at 591) it had overruled, in relevant part, People v Hamilton (55 Cal 2d 881, 901, 362 P2d 473, 485 [1961]) and People v Talbot (64 Cal 2d 691, 703, 414 P2d 633, 641 [1966]), both of which had indicated that . . . the New York `merger' doctrine . . . is not to be applied in this jurisdiction [i.e., California] to preclude a first degree felony-murder instruction based upon a burglary as to which the intended felony is the homicide itself or an offense included therein ( Wilson, 1 Cal 3d at 439-440, 462 P2d at 27-28 [emphasis added]). [9] This statement implies that our traditional merger doctrine in fact would have precluded felony murder based upon a burglary as to which homicide or assault was the target crime. As previously discussed, however, we never broadened merger beyond assault proper. Indeed, Chief Judge Cardozo specifically cited burglary as an example of a felony independent of the homicide and therefore not merged in it for purposes of felony murder ( see Moran, 246 NY at 102; see also La Marca, 3 NY2d at 466). And in Miller, of course, we declared the merger doctrine nugatory anyway in light of revised Penal Law § 125.25 (3). We also specifically (and directly contrary to Wilson ) held that a burglary premised on an intent to assault would support a felony murder conviction. No wonder, then, that we made an emphatic point in Miller to disassociate ourselves from Wilson. Of course, today the majority completely reverses field, embracing Wilson and its progeny, which unquestionably support its holding, [10] and backing away furiously from Miller, which unquestionably does not. Accordingly, the majority advances a number of superficial distinctions designed to distance itself from Miller. First, the majority contends, Miller obviously does not govern because there we interpreted Penal Law § 125.25 (3) whereas this case involves Penal Law § 125.27 (1) (a) (vii) (majority op at 65). But, of course, the operative language in these two provisions is identical. The Legislature concededly borrow[ed] (majority op at 67) from the language of Penal Law § 125.25 (3) to fashion a narrower version of it as Penal Law § 125.27 (1) (a) (vii). We must presume that the Legislature was aware of Miller when adopting the first-degree murder statute ( see e.g. People v Robinson, 95 NY2d at 184). Thus, the only reasonable inference to draw is that the Legislature intended (and expected) a burglary underlying a charge of first-degree felony murder to encompass  any crime ( People v Miller, 32 NY2d at 161 [internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis in original]; see also Mackey, 49 NY2d at 279); and any crime manifestly includes intentional murder. Further, the Legislature would have had no reason to expect (and indeed would have had every reason not to expect) us to find Wilson and California-style merger [11] suddenly persuasive, and to revive and expand the merger doctrine so as to restrict the scope of burglary under the first-degree felony murder statute. Moreover, given the purpose of the merger doctrineto preserve the distinctions among the culpable mental states of murderthe majority's revival and expansion of it for first-degree felony murder, where intent must always be proven, but not for second-degree felony murder, which may be unintentional, makes no logical sense. [12] Next, the majority opines, Miller is different because it dealt with assault, not murder, and so we would, in fact, be extend[ing] Miller if we were to decide that a burglary based upon the crime of intentional murder can properly serve as the predicate for first-degree (or, for that matter, second-degree) [13] felony murder (majority op at 66 [emphasis omitted]). The dispute in Miller was, indeed, whether a burglary based upon an assault would support a conviction for felony murder; however, this was because, it was argued, the assault merged in the murder and so the assault and the murder became one and the same. We rejected merger, and concluded that the criminal objective of the predicate burglary could be any crime, which surely includes intentional murder as well as assault. I fail to see how we would be extend[ing] Miller by reading the decision to mean what it manifestly says. Finally, the majority seems to prefer the reasoning of the concurrence in Miller, and to accept defendant's argument that the majority opinion in that case swept too broadly, or at least more broadly than was necessary to support the result (majority op at 66). To state the obvious, though, Miller 's holdings are to be found in the majority opinion, not the concurrence; the reasoning of the concurrence was not accepted by the Miller majority. Further, the concurrence's rationale is problematic. Specifically, the concurrence would have predicated [the result] on the narrower ground that even under the old law, when the doctrine of merger was in full bloom, a conviction of felony murder was sustained where the underlying offense was assault if the assault was committed on a person other than the one killed ( Miller, 32 NY2d at 161 [Jones, J., concurring]). Wagner and the other cases cited for this unexceptionable proposition, [14] however, were all decided under the old law (section 1044 [2] of the former Penal Law), and so their holdings were grounded in statutory language superseded in the revised Penal Law ( see discussion at 120-124). Additionally, these were all assault cases, not burglary-predicated-on-assault cases, as Miller was. It bears repeating that even . . . when the doctrine of merger was in full bloom ( Miller, 32 NY2d at 161), we consistently declined to extend merger beyond assault to other crimes (e.g., rape, kidnapping, larceny, robbery or burglary). Although force and violence were (or might be) an element of these other crimes, their essence (e.g., for burglary, the unlawful entering or remaining in a building) was independent of homicide.