Opinion ID: 1249738
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Liability for the Killing of Officer Patch.

Text: At trial, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal on the charge of the murder of Officer Patch, on the ground there was insufficient evidence of his criminal liability for that death. The court denied the motion. Defendant now contends there was insufficent evidence to find him liable for the first degree murder of Patch. He also contends the jury was incorrectly instructed on the issue. As will appear, we conclude there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that defendant's act was the proximate cause of the murder of Patch. But the instruction removed the element of proximate cause from the jury's consideration, an error of constitutional magnitude that requires reversal under United States Supreme Court precedent. We therefore reverse defendant's conviction for that murder. Relying in part on In re Joe R. (1980) 27 Cal.3d 496, 504 [165 Cal. Rptr. 837, 612 P.2d 927], People v. Harrison (1959) 176 Cal. App.2d 330, 336 [1 Cal. Rptr. 414], People v. Lewis (1899) 124 Cal. 551, 555-556 [57 P. 470], and People v. Button (1895) 106 Cal. 628, 629-635 [39 P. 1073], the prosecution persuaded the court that if defendant caused Gardner to lose his faculties and stab Patch impulsively or unreasoningly, Gardner's blow was a dependent intervening act for which foreseeability was not required. (See also Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law (3d ed. 1982) pp. 796-797 (hereafter Perkins & Boyce); Focht, Proximate Cause in the Law of Homicide  With Special Reference to California Cases (1938) 12 So.Cal.L.Rev. 19, 33 (hereafter Focht).) The court read the following instruction: A defendant is the proximate cause of the death of another even though the immediate cause of the death is the act of a third person, if the third person is no longer a free moral agent as the direct result of the defendant's unlawful act. [¶] A defendant who, in conscious and reckless disregard for human life, intentionally and unlawfully inflicts an injury upon a third person is criminally responsible for the acts of that person while in delirium or a similar state of unconsciousness where such condition is the direct result of the defendant's unlawful act. [¶] It is immaterial that the defendant could not reasonably have foreseen the harmful result. ... [¶] If the evidence establishes that, at the time of the assault upon Albert Patch, Charles Gardner was unconscious due to hypovolemic shock caused by the unlawful act of a defendant, he was not a free moral agent and the defendant is responsible for his act. (Italics added.) [9] The precise causation question may be posed as follows: what is the liability of A for an assault on B that deprives B of his reason and causes him to attack C, who lies some distance away? The authorities cited above do not consider this situation. Nor has our own or the parties' research divulged any case that does. [10] (25) The object of the criminal law is to deter the individual from committing acts that injure society by harming others, their property, or the public welfare, and to express society's condemnation of such acts by punishing them. The purpose of the criminal law is to define socially intolerable conduct, and to hold conduct within ... limits ... reasonably acceptable from the social point of view. (Perkins & Boyce, supra, at p. 5, fn. omitted.) Modern penal law is founded on moral culpability. The law punishes a person for a criminal act only if he is morally responsible for it. To do otherwise would be both inhumane and unenlightened. As was said in Holloway v. United States, 80 U.S.App.D.C. 3, 5, 148 F.2d 665, 666, `Our collective conscience does not allow punishment where it cannot impose blame.' ( United States v. Fielding (D.D.C. 1957) 148 F. Supp. 46, 49, fn. omitted.) (26) Of course, moral culpability is found in homicide cases when, despite the lack of any intent to kill, the consequences of the evil act are so natural or probable that liability is established as a matter of policy. Thus, for example, the Legislature has chosen to designate certain felonies as so inherently dangerous that death in the course of their commission or completion constitutes first degree murder. (§ 189.) (27) Or, under the common law doctrine of transferred intent, if A shoots at B with malice aforethought but instead kills C, who is standing nearby, A is deemed liable for murder notwithstanding lack of intent to kill C. (See Perkins & Boyce, supra, at p. 924.) (28) And liability for second degree murder will attach if the circumstances of an act show express or implied malice, which latter mental state may be found when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart (§ 188). In other words, implied malice may be found when a defendant, knowing that his or her conduct endangers life and acting with conscious disregard of the danger, commits an act the natural consequences of which are dangerous to life. (E.g., People v. Patterson (1989) 49 Cal.3d 615, 626 [262 Cal. Rptr. 195, 778 P.2d 549].) Thus, to invoke a classic example, a person who fires a bullet through a window, not knowing or caring whether anyone is behind it, may be liable for homicide regardless of any intent to kill. (29) Likewise, principles of proximate cause may sometimes assign homicide liability when, foreseeable or not, the consequences of a dangerous act directed at a second person cause an impulsive reaction that so naturally leads to a third person's death that the evil actor is deemed worthy of punishment. The few cases on point find their foundation in the famous intentional tort case of Scott v. Shepherd (1773) 96 Eng.Rep. 525. Young Shepherd threw a lighted gunpowder squib into a crowded marketplace. The recipient threw it to another, who threw it to another, who threw it to Scott, another minor. Scott was partially blinded when the device exploded. The jury awarded Scott £ 100 and the court affirmed, holding that the chain of causation was not broken. Our research discloses a few cases in the annals of American law that, following Scott v. Shepherd, supra , have found criminal liability for the death of a third party from the second party's impulsive reaction to the dangerous act. In those cases, physical proximity allowed the trier of fact to find the victim's death to be the natural and probable consequence of the defendant's violence and hence proximately caused by the defendant's act. Letner v. State (1927) 156 Tenn. 68 [299 S.W. 1049, 55 A.L.R. 915] is prototypical. The defendant was angry about a theft and a burglary and decided to sink the boat that the miscreants, Walter and Alfred, were using to cross the Emory River. The defendant fired two shots at the boat; neither found its mark, but both landed within six feet. To save himself, Walter dove out, causing the boat to capsize. Both he and Alfred drowned. Defendant was indicted for Alfred's murder; the jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Citing, inter alia, Scott v. Shepherd, supra, 96 Eng.Rep. 525, the court concluded, By firing the gun the defendant caused Walter ... to take to the water, resulting in the overturn[ing] of the boat and the drowning of Alfred. (156 Tenn. at p. 76 [299 S.W. at p. 1051].) [W]e are of the opinion that the wrongful act of the defendant ... was the primary proximate cause of their death; that the act of Walter ... in capsizing the boat was the natural result of the wrongful act of defendant, and renders the latter liable for their consequential death. ( Id. at p. 80 [299 S.W. at p. 1052].) As alluded to above, the key fact in Letner v. State , as in Scott v. Shepherd, both supra, was that the eventual victim was physically close enough that the court could hold his death to be the natural and probable consequence of the defendant's act. The same circumstance accompanied another early case considering analogous facts. In Belk v. The People (1888) 125 Ill. 584 [17 N.E. 744], the defendants were alleged to have negligently allowed their team of horses to break loose on a narrow country lane. The team collided with a wagon in plain sight just ahead, causing that wagon's team of horses to panic and run away and thereby throwing the victim, a passenger, to her death. The court reversed the resulting manslaughter convictions on other grounds, but noted, Between the acts of omission or commission of the defendants, by which it is alleged the collision occurred, and the injury of the deceased, there was not an interposition of a human will acting independently ... or any extraordinary natural phenomena, to break the causal connection. It may be fairly said that what followed the colliding of the defendants' team with the wagon in which the deceased was riding, was the natural and probable effect of the collision.... (125 Ill. at pp. 587-588 [17 N.E. at p. 745].) The early cases' implicit rule that the ultimate victim's death must be the natural and probable consequence of the defendant's act was later given explicit currency in the context of tort liability, though on different analytical grounds. In the classic case of Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. (1928) 248 N.Y. 339 [162 N.E. 99, 59 A.L.R. 1253] (hereafter Palsgraf ), defendant's employees negligently let a passenger's bundle of fireworks fall and explode at a train station. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales many feet away at the other end of the platform, striking the plaintiff. (248 N.Y. at p. 341 [162 N.E. at p. 99]; see Prosser, Palsgraf Revisited (1953) 52 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 2-3) (hereafter Prosser).) The majority concluded that there was no duty to protect a person so far removed that the harm was unforeseeable; the dissent declared that there was a duty toward the world at large not to be negligent toward anyone (cf. Civ. Code, § 1714) but that limitations on this liability could be founded on a lack of proximate cause and the remoteness of the damage. (See Prosser, supra, at pp. 5-6.) While Prosser criticizes the majority for ignoring the duty rule, he asks rhetorically, What is the true reason that so many of us feel that the case was correctly decided, and that Mrs. Palsgraf should not recover? ... It is that what did happen to her is too preposterous. Her connection with the defendant's guards and the package is too tenuous; in the old language, she is too remote. The combination of events and circumstances necessary to injure her is too improbable, too fantastic.... [¶] If there is any middle ground between the restricted scope of the original risk on the one hand and the extreme lengths to which even direct causation may be carried out on the other, it must lie in some reasonably close connection between the harm threatened and the harm done. ( Id. at p. 27.) Focht would later lament that Palsgraf 's influence has been negligible in the criminal law. (Focht, supra, 12 So.Cal.L.Rev. 19, 53.) In cases of constructive intent, the better[] solution would be to apply the `zone of danger' doctrine to the law of crimes. ( Id. at p. 29.) But Focht is wrong: in fact, the courts, though using the terminology of natural and probable consequences, were applying a Palsgraf -type analysis before Palsgraf, and have continued to do so since. In Wright v. State (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1978) 363 So.2d 617, the defendant, driving one car, fired at an intended victim in another. The target rapidly accelerated his car while `ducking bullets' and ran over and killed a pedestrian. ( Id. at p. 618.) The defendant was convicted of manslaughter following an instruction that the victim's consequent injury [must be] a natural and probable consequence of the defendant's violence. ( Ibid. ) The court affirmed the judgment, finding sufficient evidence to sustain the conviction. ( Id. at p. 619.) And in Madison v. State (1955) 234 Ind. 517 [130 N.E.2d 35], the court found implied malice and affirmed a conviction of second degree murder when the defendant threw a hand grenade at one Couch who, presumably impulsively, kicked it to another who was killed. The fact that Couch kicked the grenade did not break the line of causation. Scott v. Shepherd [ supra ].... (234 Ind. at p. 525 [130 N.E.2d at p. 38].) The criminal law thus is clear that for liability to be found, the cause of the harm not only must be direct, but also not so remote as to fail to constitute the natural and probable consequence of the defendant's act. Commentators and drafters have made this conclusion explicit. (Perkins & Boyce, supra, at p. 774; LaFave & Scott, Criminal Law (2d ed. 1986) Causation, p. 284 [the doctrine of transferred intent should not apply when A, standing in a lonely desert with B, shoots to kill B but instead kills C, who lies unseen behind some sagebrush]; Model Pen. Code, § 2.03, subd. (2)(b) [when purpose or knowledge of a result is an element of an offense, the actor is not liable for an unintended or uncontemplated result unless, as relevant here, the actual result involves the same kind of injury or harm as that designed or contemplated and is not too remote or accidental in its occurrence to have a ... bearing on the actor's liability or on the gravity of his offense.].) Moreover, if one aim of the criminal law is to punish in proportion to moral culpability, little purpose is served by imposing the same punishment for direct but remote consequences of a violent act as for natural and probable direct consequences. (30, 31)(See fn. 11.) We note that in each of the cases we have cited in this discussion the trier of fact has apparently subscribed to this view: the defendant was either charged with murder but found guilty instead of manslaughter ( Belk v. The People, supra, 125 Ill. 584, 586 [17 N.E. 744, 745]; Letner v. State, supra, 156 Tenn. 68, 70-71 [299 S.W. 1049, 1050]; Wright v. State, supra, 363 So.2d 617, 618); or, in Madison v. State, supra, 234 Ind. 517, 521 [130 N.E. 35], with first degree murder and convicted of murder in the second degree. [11] Here, following an instruction that foreseeability was not to be considered, the jury found defendant guilty of murder in the first degree for Gardner's killing of Patch. The questions are threefold: was there sufficient evidence to confer liability for first degree murder; was there sufficient evidence of proximate cause for any criminal liability to attach to defendant for Patch's death; and does the instruction regarding foreseeability require reversal of defendant's conviction? (32) The first question need not long detain us. Liability for first degree murder cannot attach absent evidence of premeditation and deliberation or of other acts irrelevant to this discussion. (§ 189.) There is no evidence whatever that defendant contemplated the murder of Patch, much less premeditated and deliberated it. On that ground, the first degree murder conviction cannot stand, for we discern no other doctrine, such as felony murder or transferred intent, that would suffice to confer liability for that degree of murder in this case. (33) The next question is whether the evidence permitted the jury to determine that defendant's acts were the proximate cause of Patch's death. We hold there was sufficient evidence of proximate cause for the jury to decide that liability attached for defendant's acts. We have consumed much space explaining that if the eventual victim's death is not the natural and probable consequence of a defendant's act, then liability cannot attach. Shots that cause a driver to accelerate impulsively and run over a nearby pedestrian suffice to confer liability ( Wright v. State, supra, 363 So.2d 617); but if the driver, still upset, had proceeded for several miles before killing a pedestrian, at some point the required causal nexus would have become too attenuated for the initial bad actor to be liable even for manslaughter, much less for first degree murder. It is a natural consequence that shots fired at a boat may cause a passenger to leap out and thereby cause another in the boat to drown ( Letner v. State, supra, 156 Tenn. 68 [299 S.W. 1049]); but if the boat had capsized, floated some miles down the river and over a waterfall, and fallen on the head of another boater, the shooter probably would not be criminally liable for that boater's death. After considerable reflection, however, we conclude that the evidence sufficed to permit the jury to conclude that Patch's death was the natural and probable consequence of defendant's act. This is so because Patch was in the area in which harm could foreseeably occur as a result of a prison stabbing. Defendant mortally wounded Gardner, but the latter nevertheless was able to seize a knife that an assailant had left on the floor. As the jury found, the attack left Gardner in a daze, without the ability to reason or calculate. In that condition he staggered up a flight of stairs to the second floor in pursuit of defendant's accomplice Menefield. There he engaged in a purely reflexive struggle with Patch and plunged the knife into him. It is foreseeable that a wounded inmate might try to arm himself with a weapon abandoned at the scene of a prison melee and pursue his attackers a short distance. The jury was entitled to find that the distance Gardner pursued Menefield was not so great as to break the chain of causation. (34) As stated above, however, our inquiry does not end here. Because the jurors found that Gardner was unconscious when he attacked Patch, the instruction directed them not to consider whether the attack on Patch was foreseeable. Under that instruction, whether Patch was standing next to Gardner or half a mile away was not to be taken into account, as long as Patch's killing was the direct result of defendant's act. As we have explained, the instruction incorrectly stated the law of proximate cause. A result cannot be the natural and probable cause of an act if the act was unforeseeable. (See Perkins & Boyce, supra, at p. 824 [the abnormality of a response is an element to be considered in evaluating proximate cause].) An instruction that told the jury to disregard foreseeability would inevitably lead it to ignore the nature of Gardner's response to defendant's attack, and hence would substantially distract the jury from considering the causation element of the offense  an element that was very much at issue in the case. The instructional error thus cannot be said to have been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt ( Chapman v. California, supra, 386 U.S. 18) and defendant's conviction of the murder of Patch must be reversed. [12]