Court Opinion

ID: 9565963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:30:51.704471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:22.548461
License: Public Domain

GERBER, Judge,
specially concurring.
I write specially to address what for me are troublesome due process issues in the two felony murder convictions. This case demonstrates why the felony murder rule has generated what the commentary to Hawaii § 707-701 terms “an extensive history of thoughtful condemnation.” The essence of the problem is that the felony murder doctrine creates a strict liability crime because the mental state for felony murder is mandatorily presumed from evidence of the mental state of the predicate felony, burglary in this case. In this unique area where the stakes are as high as a death penalty or life imprisonment, A.R.S. § 13-1105(B) both denies the relevance of the defendant’s actual mental state and, in its place, presumes a mental state sufficient for felony-murder from the commission of a crime less severe than homicide. Elsewhere we have learned not to indulge similar mandatory presumptions; See State v. Forrester, 134 Ariz. 444, 657 P.2d 432 (App.1982).
We first learned the felony murder rule from England. It arose at a time in that country when all felonies were punishable by death. Whether someone hanged for the felony or the murder made little difference. The rule may have made some minimal sense in a legal system which did not recognize the tort of wrongful death. Modern England abolished the rule without lament in 1957, more than thirty years ago. Well before abolition, English scholars were unanimous in condemning it for violating the bedrock principles of our criminal law, specifically the otherwise universal requirement to establish homicidal mental state for a homicide conviction. In 1834 His Majesty’s Commissioners on Criminal Law found the felony murder rule “totally incongruous with the principles of our jurisprudence.” First Report of His Majesty’s Commissioners on Criminal Law 29 (1834). Sir James Stephens found the rule a “monstrous doctrine.” 3 Stephens, History of the Criminal Law of England 75 (1883).
Modern commentators have almost uniformly denounced the rule and its illusory deterrence value. The American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code and Commentary, Pt. II, at 37-39, comment to section 210.2 (1980), on which our criminal code heavily relies, generally recommends abolition of felony murder. G. Fletcher's Reth*555inking the Criminal Law (1978) denounces the rule as “fictitious” and “violative of equal protection.” The rule has been abolished not only in England but also in India and severely restricted in Canada and in most other Commonwealth countries. It does not exist in Europe. See Model Penal Code, Sec. 210.2, 39-40 (1980). Where it does exist, the rule is regularly the subject of scholarly ridicule, e.g., Note, “Felony-Murder: A Tort Law Reconceptualization,” 99 Harv.L.R. 1918 (1986) (less protection than accorded wrongful death tort defendants); Roth and Sundby, “The Felony Murder Rule: A Doctrine at Constitutional Crossroads,” 70 Cornell L.R. 446 (1985) (unconstitutional mandatory presumptions); Note, “Should Courts Use Principles of Justification and Excuse to Impose Felony-Murder Liability?”, 19 Rutgers L.J. 451 (1985) (“... Russian roulette ... cannot engender widespread public confidence”.)
Where the rule survives, the interpretive trend is to narrow its application. Legislatively, the rule has been limited in enlightened states in varied ways — by restricting its application to specified felonies, by requiring a stricter interpretation of causation, by limiting the applicable time period, or by requiring that the underlying felony be independent of the homicide. See La-Fave and Scott, Substantive Criminal Law, 206-234 (2nd edition, 1986). Other states have abolished the rule entirely either by judicial fiat or by statute. See e.g., Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 507.020; Hawaii Rev. Stat. §§ 707-701; People v. Aaron, 409 Mich. 672, 299 N.W.2d 304 (1980) (calling the rule “unjust” and “fundamentally unfair”). Other courts have candidly admitted that the rule serves no deterrent function. Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Myers, 438 Pa. 218, 226-27, 261 A.2d 550, 554-55 (1970).
One of the most common limitations placed on the rule is to preclude homicide liability when the felony-murder killing is done by the victim, as occurred here. See e.g., Commonwealth v. Balliro, 349 Mass. 505, 209 N.E.2d 308 (1965); Commonwealth v. Redline, 391 Pa. 486, 137 A.2d 472 (1958); People v. Washington, 62 Cal.2d 777, 44 Cal.Rptr. 442, 402 P.2d 130 (1965); Weick v. State, 420 A.2d 159 (Del. 1980); State v. Crane, 247 Ga. 779, 279 S.E.2d 695 (1981). These results acknowledge that the rule cannot deter felons by holding them responsible for actions not under their control. To impose on all felons an additional penalty for a killing initiated by a victim punishes felons solely for the unpredictable response over which the felon has no control. The rule cannot possibly deter this type of killing. As to acting with reckless indifference to foreseeable death, that kind of homicidal culpability is already adequately covered by the existing provisions of second degree murder under A.R.S. § 13-1104, thus making felony-murder coverage unnecessary and redundant.
These observations are prompted not by sympathy for homicidal felons but by a quest for a law that generates respect, one which, in a word, does not sacrifice principle to crime-fighting rhetoric. The social sciences are learning, slowly, that people do not obey the law out of self-interest nor from fear of punishment but instead from recognition of its fairness. T. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (Yale, 1990). Though I have these and other serious hesitations about both the wisdom and the dubious due process aspects of this expansive use of a rule progressively being eliminated or narrowed in principled jurisdictions, I am reminded that my role is to be neither legislator nor evaluator of its wisdom and that my thoughts generally should be confined to those raised by appellate counsel. The due process issues, at least for me, need to await knowledgeable articulation at both the trial and appellate level, neither of which has occurred here.