Court Opinion

ID: 9745385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:52:37.885244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:59.759904
License: Public Domain

BOREN, P. J.
I concur.
I write separately to emphasize that the Legislature has the prerogative to categorize the degrees of murder. It has done so in Penal Code section 189. As given, the trial court’s jury instruction (CALJIC No. 8.26) runs afoul of section 189. The People have urged that a “conspiracy murder” theory of liability permits such instruction. The People’s conclusion is baffling.
The prosecuting attorney in discussing this instruction told the trial judge that “the conspiracy murder theory under 8.26 . . . requires a finding of first-degree murder.” The trial court apparently adopted the prosecution’s conclusion. However, it does not correctly state the law of California.
“If two or more persons conspire ... [¶] ... to commit any .... felony” they commit the crime of conspiracy and are “punishable in the same manner and to the same extent as is provided for the punishment of that felony.” (Pen. Code, § 182.) For that reason a person who conspires to commit felonious assault shall be punished to the same extent that person would have been if that person had committed (or aided and abetted) such an assault. It follows that a conspiracy to assault that results in a homicide results also in the same punishment as that attending a nonconspiratorial assault that leads to a homicide. Thus, I concur wholly in the reasoning stated in Justice Nott’s opinion.
The confusion the prosecution generated in the trial court probably stems from case law concerning “conspiracy murder” where the conspiracy has as its objective murder itself. The California Supreme Court has ruled that where the objective of conspiracy is murder it is always first degree murder. (People v. Cortez (1998) 18 Cal.4th 1223, 1237-1238 [77 Cal.Rptr.2d 733, 960 P.2d 537].) It appears likely that the prosecution here confused the term “conspiracy murder” with “conspiracy to murder.”
Throughout the history of Penal Code section 189, defendants have from time to time advanced the argument that in order for the felony-murder provisions of section 189 to apply (i.e., that “[a]ll murder . . . which is committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate,” certain enumerated felonies [not including felonious assault] “is murder of the first degree”) *256a “murder” must have first been committed. It is within that context that the Supreme Court as early as 1889 stated: “[W]here the killing is the result of the commission or the attempt to commit a felony, whether it be one of those named in section 189 of the code or not, the law attaches the felonious intent accompanying the crime contemplated to the act of killing, and constitutes it murder.” (People v. Olsen (1889) 80 Cal. 122, 126 [22 P. 125].) That language does not authorize imposition of first degree felony-murder status against a conspiracy to assault that results in a killing. The Supreme Court’s holding was merely to the effect that a killing resulting from the commission of any inherently dangerous felony constitutes a “murder” for purpose of applying section 189. Section 189 nevertheless controls the degree assigned to such a murder.
Therefore, because assault is not among the felonies enumerated in Penal Code section 189, assault is not a predicate felony that elevates a killing to first degree murder. Thus, whether the defendant is liable as a principal, as an aider and abettor, or as a conspirator, he or she cannot be found guilty under felony-murder principles of first degree murder where the target crime is a felonious assault that results in death.
Respondent’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied November 17, 1999.