Court Opinion

ID: 9630033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:58:03.080934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:32:22.672543
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment and join the opinion of the court. I write separately, however, lest our affirmance of Scott’s murder conviction be perceived as having disposed of an issue which is fairly presented by the record, but which has not been raised by counsel or decided by this court.
Like Johnson, Scott was convicted, inter alia, of felony murder, and sentenced to serve twenty years to life for that offense.1 So far as this record reveals, Scott was sitting in the Jeep Cherokee when Johnson committed the predicate felony for the two men’s murder convictions by snatching Ms. Conroy’s purse. Subsequently, Scott was a passenger in the same vehicle when Johnson, seeking to avoid apprehension by pursuing officers, plowed into a bus stop, killing a four-year-old girl.
Proportionality is the hallmark of any rational and fair system of criminal justice and, notwithstanding the tragic consequences of this criminal venture, I apprehend that such proportionality may be lacking as to Scott. As Judge Traynor stated for the court in a different but related context in People v. Washington, 62 Cal.2d 777, 44 Cal.Rptr. 442, 402 P.2d 130 (1965) (en banc),
[t]he felony-murder rule has been criticized on the grounds that in almost all cases in which it is applied it is unnecessary and that it erodes the relation between criminal liability and moral culpability.... Although it is the law in this state ..., it should not be extended beyond any rational function that it is designed to serve.
Id., 44 Cal.Rptr. at 446, 402 P.2d at 134 (citations omitted).
A number of decisions in this jurisdiction have addressed the liability of an aider or abettor, see D.C.Code § 22-105 (1989), under our felony murder statute, D.C.Code § 22-2401 (1989). See, e.g., Prophet v. United States, 602 A.2d 1087, 1094-95 (D.C.1992); Christian v. United States, 394 A.2d 1, 48-49 (D.C.1978) (per curiam), cert. denied, 442 U.S. 944, 99 S.Ct. 2889, 61 L.Ed.2d 315 (1979); Waller v. United States, 389 A.2d 801, 807 (D.C.1978), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 901, 100 S.Ct. 1824, 64 L.Ed.2d 253 (1980); cf. Marshall v. United States, 623 A.2d 551, 557-58 (D.C.1992); id. at 559-62 (Ferren, J., dissenting). This court held in each of these cases that a participant in an armed robbery may properly be convicted of felony murder where someone is shot to death during the course of the venture, irrespective of the lack on the defendant’s part of an intent to kill the victim. We stated in Prophet that “[a]ll accomplices are culpable for the resulting death,” 602 A.2d at 1095 (quoting West v. United States, 499 A.2d 860, 866 (D.C.1985)), and that “[ojnly intent to commit the underlying felony need be proved.” Id. (quoting Waller, 389 A.2d at 807) (italics omitted). These decisions make sense because, in the words of a leading treatise:
Even though [two co-felons, A and B] have made [no agreement to rob X by killing him], if in the process of robbing or attempting to rob X, B’s gun goes off accidentally, killing X, A would be guilty of the felony murder of X as much as B would be, under the rule concerning parties to crime that all parties are guilty for deviations from the common plan which are the foreseeable consequences of carrying out the plan (an accidental shooting during an armed robbery being a typical example of a foreseeable deviation from the plan to rob).
*440Wayne LaFave & Austin Scott, JR., Handbook on CRIMINAL Law § 71 at 553 (1972) (quoted in Prophet, supra, 602 A.2d at 1095 n. 12) (emphasis added in Prophet).
In Prophet, Christian, and Waller, as in the hypothetical situation described by La-Fave and Scott, the aider and abettor joined a criminal venture in which, at least, a confederate was armed. The availability of the firearm provided the means by which the robbery could be carried out, and its use was readily foreseeable. This case, however, is quite different. Neither Johnson nor Scott is alleged to have been armed, and death was not a foreseeable consequence of the criminal venture.
I do not think that these considerations could help Johnson. Having driven off in the stolen vehicle at a high rate of speed and ignored traffic laws, Johnson is in no position to complain that his own recklessness was an unforeseen event which interrupted the causal link between the predicate felony and the death of the young decedent. It is difficult to see, on the other hand, how Scott could reasonably be expected to anticipate that Johnson, in seeking to elude the police, would turn the Jeep Cherokee, during a comparatively short ride, into an instrument of death. To me, it is an open question whether the reasoning of cases like Prophet, Waller, and Christian, albeit sometimes phrased in sweeping language, is to be carried over to a situation like the present one, in which the protagonists were unarmed. See, e.g., United States v. Alston, 580 A.2d 587, 594 n. 12 (D.C.1990) (language in opinions must be construed in light of the facts before the court, and may not be uncritically applied to different factual scenarios).
Scott’s counsel, however, has not raised this issue. Although he has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, he has done so entirely on grounds common to his client and to Johnson, arguing in this connection that the lack of immediate pursuit after the robbery, as well as the stop sign violation, interrupted the causal connection between the robbery and the decedent’s death. Nowhere in Scott’s submission is there any contention that Johnson’s reckless operation of the vehicle was not foreseeable to Scott, and that it differentiated his own legal situation from Johnson’s. Similarly, Scott has not included in his criticism of the trial judge’s instructions to the jury any contention based on Johnson’s driving, nor did he request an instruction in the trial court along the lines suggested in this opinion. Accordingly, the question which I have identified is not before us for decision — indeed, the government has not had any occasion to address it — and the opinion of the court is not to be construed as having decided it.

. The trial judge ordered that the shorter sentences which Scott received for the other crimes arising out of this incident be served concurrently with his sentence for felony murder.