Opinion ID: 2046959
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Conflating Depraved Indifference Murder with Intentional Murder

Text: The distinction between depraved indifference murder and intentional murder has been recognized as critical not only by our own Legislature and Practice Commentary authors but by other commentators. In their treatise, LaFave and Scott list types of conduct that various jurisdictions have held to be depraved: firing a bullet into a room of occupants; starting a fire at the front door of an occupied building; shooting into a moving train or automobile; throwing a beer glass at someone carrying a lighted oil lamp; playing Russian roulette; and shooting twice from eight feet away, not aiming at the victim, but with the bullets ricocheting in unpredictable directions after hitting hard surfaces ( see 2 LaFave and Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 7.4 [a], at 202-203 [footnotes omitted]). The authors go on to list other examples of extremely risky conduct such as piloting a speedboat through a group of swimmers or swooping an airplane so low over a traveling car as to risk decapitating a motorist ( see id. at 203). These illustrations, which could constitute intentional murder given the proper mens rea, epitomize the depravity that we have insisted upon for 150 years in defining depraved indifference murder. There is, however, a glaring omission from this list. The list does not (and cannot possibly) include intentionally shooting someone in the head (or, as here, in the chest) at point-blank range. The reason is simple: such an act should be prosecuted only as intentional murder under Penal Law § 125.25 (1). Indeed, if intentional murder qualifies as depraved indifference murder, there is nothing left of the depraved indifference murder statute. Any such killing would automatically be both intentional and depraved indifference murder. That result is not only illogical but also discordant both with our decisional law and the statutory scheme's heightened requirements for depraved indifference murder. Moreover, it would equate homicides that should not be equated. The defendant who causes a person's death by opening a lion's cage, derailing a train or detonating a bomb in a public area should not be placed in the same classification as the defendant who uses a knife or a gun to kill an antagonist in a bar fight. Lumping these defendants together destroys the foundations of the depraved indifference murder statute and diminishes the severity of the most horrific killings for which the statute is reserved. [16] The People nevertheless ask us to adopt the Trial Judge's erroneous formulation and endorse it as the law of this state. In their summation at trial, the People pressed the same theory they unwaveringly advanced from the inception of the case through this appeal: defendant intended to kill the victim. In arguing before the jury, the prosecutor elaborated in words that could not have been plainer or more emphatic: defendant is guilty of intentional murder because when he shot the gun at [the decedent]    [h]e shot at his heart. You can intend no other result when you shoot a gun at someone's chest, other than to kill him and he did kill him, and that is why he is guilty of intentional murder (emphasis added). Echoing the Trial Judge, the People continue to argue that this very act of shooting the gun at the decedent's chest at point-blank range is so depraved (and evinces such indifference) that it qualifies as depraved indifference murder. Under the prosecutor's reasoning, the closer one points the gun to the chest (i.e., the closer one gets to intentional murder) the more indifferent is the actor. This formulation defines indifference and depravity by using intentionality of all thingsas its measure. The more intentional the act, the argument goes, the more it reveals the defendant's depravity. We are afforded the ultimate incongruity when the prosecution argues that willfully aiming a bullet at the chest is necessarily the most depraved act of all. This reasoning illogically conflates depraved indifference with intent, and the depraved indifference murder statute is nullified, utterly. So too with the indifference component. The more the killer intends to kill the victim (the People's argument goes), the more indifferent the killer is to the victim's fate. But this obviously cannot be so. Intent to kill is a world apart from indifference. The two states of mind are incompatible and cannot be held simultaneously ( see Gallagher, 69 NY2d at 529). The intentional murdererwho wants the victim dead and makes sure of itshould not be confused with the defendant who acts come what may and is indifferent to whether the victim lives or dies or is injured or even exists. The defendant who derails a train or poisons a well come what may has no specific intent to kill a particular person. Indeed, such defendants are totally indifferent as to whether their actions might or might not kill someone. It is their indifference to human lifenot their intent to take human lifethat marks them as the fittest candidates for depraved indifference murder convictions. Conversely, if the defendant poisoned the well knowing that the intended victim was about to drink from it, the act would amount to intentional murder, not depraved indifference murder. By arguing that all intentional murders are depraved because they are intentional, the People reveal the circularity of their position. This misconception would not be evident to jurors because they are not acquainted with the Penal Law's gradations. When exhorted to do so, jurors may irresistibly (and understandably) be tempted to accept the notion that someone who aims a bullet at the victim's chest (or brain) is acting with depraved indifference to human life. Indeed, the DCJS statistics graphically reveal as much. Legally, however, the notion is all wrong because it thoroughly undoes the statutory scheme and obliterates the crucial distinction between depraved indifference and intentional murder. In conversational terms, most people would have little difficulty in characterizing as depraved the behavior of someone who selects a victim, points a gun at that victim's head or chest and pulls the trigger. And yet we know that this act is and should be punishable not as depraved indifference murder but as intentional murder. Of course, we could call it depraved indifference murder, but we would have to scrap the Penal Law. A finding of depravity in this fashion entails policy implications that are deeply troubling. Primarily, it makes it too easy for prosecutors to seize upon depraved indifference murder as a fallback position whenever their proof for intentional murder fails to satisfy the jury. Resultingly, whenever there is insufficient evidence to make a case for intentional murder, the prosecution will inappropriately have a second chance at a murder conviction rather than one for manslaughter in the first degree under Penal Law § 125.20 (1). Moreover, by diverting the jury to consider depraved indifference murder, trial courts (unwittingly, but palpably nonetheless) will mislead jurors into believing that depraved indifference murder is a milder charge readily available either when intentional murder has not been proved or as a means of extending a measure of leniency. The result is predictable: if and when a trial court in an intentional murder case erroneously authorizes a jury to consider depraved indifference murder, there is the very real possibility that the jury will improperly find the defendant guilty of depraved indifference murder. The jury cannot possibly realize the unfairness in it because they are not familiar with the refinements of the statutory scheme for homicides. They will go home believing (wrongly) that they convicted the defendant of a lesser grade of homicide. Furthermore, by diverting juries to consider depraved indifference murder, the People further enhance the probability of an unfair conviction because the depraved indifference murder statute does not permit an affirmative defense for extreme emotional distress ( compare Penal Law § 125.25 [1] [a] with Penal Law § 125.25 [2]; see also Gegan, More Cases of Depraved Mind Murder: The Problem of Mens Rea, 64 St John's L Rev 429, 438-439 [1990]). Beyond that, there is the prospect of fallback prosecutions and overcharging as described by the dissent in Roe ( see n 9, supra ). [17]