Opinion ID: 2141968
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Distinction from Intentional Murder

Text: According to Penal Law § 125.25 (2), a person commits depraved indifference murder when [u]nder circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person. That taking the life of another can itself, in a sense, be considered a depraved act does not, however, turn every killing into depraved indifference murder as proscribed by the Penal Law. We thus begin by once again underscoring that the use of a weapon can never result in depraved indifference murder when . . . there is a manifest intent to kill ( Payne, 3 NY3d at 271 [2004] [point-blank shooting insufficient to establish depraved indifference murder]). That is so because [i]ndifference to the victim's life . . . contrasts with the intent to take it ( id. at 270). The People concede this proposition, but seek to distinguish Suarez from Payne, and from Gonzalez (1 NY3d 464 [2004] [10 shots fired at close range]), because in those cases the defendant used a gun, whereas here he used a knife. Thus, despite Payne 's plain statement that a one-on-one shooting or knifing (or similar killing) can almost never qualify as depraved indifference murder (3 NY3d at 272 [emphasis added]), the People maintain that a jury could reasonably have concluded that Suarez's infliction of stab wounds to the throat, chest and abdomen of his victim reflected not an intent to kill but merely an intent to seriously injure her. If the prosecution meant by this nothing more than that the evidence would have supported defendant's conviction for intentional murder  despite the jury's acquittal of that charge  as well as his conviction for intentional manslaughter in the first degree, we would agree. However, the People contend further that the evidence here also established depraved indifference murder, on the theory that Suarez's actions in stabbing the victim created a grave risk of her death  a risk that he consciously disregarded when he failed to seek medical assistance for the injuries he intentionally inflicted and instead left her there to die. That is not the law. If it were, every homicide, particularly intentional ones, would be converted into depraved indifference murder ( Payne, 3 NY3d at 270; see also People v Hafeez, 100 NY2d 253, 259 [2003] [where defendant's conscious objective was to intentionally injur(e) the victim, there was no valid line of reasoning that could support a jury's conclusion that defendant possessed the mental culpability required for depraved indifference murder]). Indeed, the flaw in the People's argument is perhaps best demonstrated by comparing Suarez with McPherson. In Suarez, the People maintain that depraved indifference is established by the defendant's intentional infliction of a mortal wound, followed by his flight from the scene of the killing. Because the defendant left the bleeding victim still alive without finishing her off, we are told, he must not have intended her death (which in turn exempts the case from the manifest intent to kill rule of Payne ). But since he did nothing to save her, his actions, we are further told, reflected a depraved indifference to her life. [3] In McPherson, by contrast, we are told that the defendant's conduct in calling for an ambulance after discovering that her victim had been wounded in itself reflected depraved indifference. For, the argument goes, her very actions in summoning assistance show that she did not intend for the victim to die. That being so, her crime (the People assert) must have been one of indifference, not of intentionality; and since the risk of death created by a chest wound is a grave one, the depraved indifference murder statute is satisfied. When the People can make, and courts can accept, arguments in which both the rendering of assistance and the failure to render assistance serve to establish depraved indifference, there must be a fundamental misapprehension of the concept of the crime. The People's argument is flawed on two grounds. First, a killing (whether intentional or unintentional) is not transformed into depraved indifference murder simply because the killer does not summon aid for the victim. Otherwise, homicides would be routinely and improperly converted into depraved indifference murders whenever  as is often the case  the killer leaves the scene. Even more obviously, a killing does not become a depraved indifference murder merely because the killer summons aid and thus reveals an intent that the victim not die. Surely, a killer does not commit depraved indifference murder just because he or she wants the victim to live. Second, and irrespective of what the actor does or does not do after inflicting the fatal injury, depraved indifference murder is not made out unless the core statutory requirement of depraved indifference is established. Depraved indifference murder does not mean an extremely, even heinously, intentional killing. . . . When a defendant's conscious objective is to cause death, the depravity of the circumstances under which the intentional homicide is committed is simply irrelevant. Nor can the wanton disregard for human life inherent in every intentional homicide convert such a killing into depraved indifference murder ( Gonzalez, 1 NY3d at 468).