Court Opinion

ID: 9764514
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:25:14.916522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:57.639409
License: Public Domain

HUNSTEIN, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I concur fully in the judgment but write to emphasize how this case demonstrates the proper application of proximate cause in felony murder appeals, in contrast to the recently decided opinion in State v. Jackson, 287 Ga. 646 (697 SE2d 757) (2010). The instant case involves a defendant who doused the victim with gasoline and then set her on fire, directly inflicting the injuries that proximately caused her death. See OCGA § 16-2-20 (b) (1). His conviction for felony murder is thus wholly consistent with the well-established principle that
[w]here one inflicts an unlawful injury, such injury is to be accounted as the efficient, proximate cause of the death, whenever it shall be made to appear, either that (1) the injury itself constituted the sole proximate cause of the death; or that (2) the injury directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death; or that (3) the injury materially accelerated the death, although proximately occasioned by a pre-existing cause.
Wilson v. State, 190 Ga. 824, 829 (10 SE2d 861) (1940). See also Larkin v. State, 247 Ga. 586 (1) (278 SE2d 365) (1981) (“[w]here one *371inflicts an unlawful injury, such injury is the proximate cause of death if the injury ‘directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death’”). Under this principle, this Court has upheld the murder convictions of the following defendants: one who hit and kicked the victim, causing him to fall headfirst onto a concrete parking lot, fatally injuring him1; a defendant who shot the victim in the leg, causing the victim to fall out of his car, which then rolled over and killed him2; a defendant who exchanged gunshots with the victim during a burglary, causing the victim to die of a heart attack3; a defendant who stabbed his victim, causing her to later die due to a complication arising from surgery required to re-stitch the knife wound4; a defendant who threw his drunken victim off a bridge into a river, where the victim then drowned5; and a defendant who smashed the victim’s skull with a hatchet, resulting in the victim’s death nine months later from infection.6
In each of these cases, the defendant injured the victim in some manner that led to the victim’s death. In marked contrast to this line of cases, Jackson involved two defendants charged with felony murder who never inflicted any injuries on the victim that led to the victim’s death. OCGA § 16-2-20 (b) (1). Moreover, they never intentionally caused another to commit the injuries that led to the victim’s death, id. at (b) (2); never intentionally aided or abetted in the commission of the injuries that led to the victim’s death, id. at (b) (3); and never intentionally advised, encouraged, hired, counseled or procured another to commit the murder. Id. at (b) (4). The only thing the defendants in Jackson allegedly did was to set in motion a series of events that ultimately prompted the actual shooter, who was the intended target of the defendants’ armed robbery, to fire at and kill one of the defendants’ co-conspirators. Rather than upholding established Georgia precedent and recognizing that the defendants in Jackson could not be deemed criminally responsible for the victim’s death, the majority in Jackson instead imported civil tort liability principles into Georgia criminal law in order to usurp the legislative prerogative by crafting a wholly new basis for criminal liability in this State.
*372Decided November 1, 2010
Reconsideration denied December 14, 2010.
Edwards & Edwards, H. B. Edwards III, for appellant.
J. David Miller, District Attorney, Tracy K. Chapman, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Mary Beth Westmoreland, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Mary K. Ware, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Jackson is thus both factually distinguishable from this case and legally distinguishable from the well-established principle of law on which it is based. The facts here serve only to demonstrate how ill-advised the Jackson majority was to judicially rewrite OCGA § 16-2-20 to add this new form of criminal liability. Although the majority carefully avoids citing Jackson here, it should seize this opportunity to overrule it before Jackson proximately causes any further damage to this area of criminal law.

 Skaggs v. State, 278 Ga. 19 (596 SE2d 159) (2004).

 Williams v. State, 255 Ga. 21 (334 SE2d 691) (1985).

 Durden v. State, 250 Ga. 325 (297 SE2d 237) (1982). See also Dupree v. State, 247 Ga. 470 (277 SE2d 18) (1981) (defendant who robbed elderly victim found guilty of felony murder when victim died of heart failure brought on by stress and injuries incurred during the robbery).

 Larkin v. State, 247 Ga. 586 (278 SE2d 365) (1981).

 Ward v. State, 238 Ga. 367 (233 SE2d 175) (1977).

 Wilson v. State, supra, 190 Ga. at 824.