Court Opinion

ID: 9797373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:19:14.902353+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:54:39.673636
License: Public Domain

Maupin, C. J.,
concurring:
I write separately to address a point made by the dissent. The criminal intent and inherent danger underlying battery is, for purposes of merger, indistinguishable from the other felonious predicate crimes of burglary. In my view, the deterrence of accidental or negligent killings by felons is only one of the policies served by the felony-murder rule. To me, the fundamental purpose of the felony-murder rule is to prevent innocent deaths likely to occur during the commission of inherently dangerous felonies.1
Indeed, each predicate crime specifically enumerated in Nevada’s felony-murder statute,2 including burglary, is inherently dangerous to human life. This statutory scheme demonstrates a legislative recognition that “[t]he heinous character” of these enumerated felonies “justi[fies] the omission of the requirements of premeditation and deliberation.’ ’3 While a burglary charge may be based upon an intent to commit any felony when entering a structure, the burglary statute specifically includes “assault or battery on any person” as a felony that may underlie a burglary.4
Thus, the legislature, when it included burglary as a predicate crime of felony murder, was clearly aware that a burglary charge may be based upon the intent to commit a felonious assault or battery. The legislature, in light of this awareness, did not specifically exclude burglary perpetrated with the intent to commit assault or battery as a basis for felony murder. This, in turn, indicates that the legislature never intended the merger doctrine to operate under such circumstances.
As noted by the majority, other jurisdictions have refused to preclude a felony-murder charge stemming from a burglary the *339predicate crime for which is battery, or assault.5 These jurisdictions recognize that the legislature, rather than the court, has the authority to determine and define the scope of the felony-murder rule. Here, the Nevada Legislature has specifically included, without restriction, battery as one of the predicate crimes of burglary.

CONCLUSION

The crime of battery is as inherently dangerous as the other predicate felonies of burglary, if not more so, and the legislature has not created any exceptions to the specifically enumerated felonies that may serve as a predicate for burglary for the purpose of the felony-murder rule. Thus, the majority correctly refrains from judicially creating distinctions between the predicate crimes of burglary for these purposes.

 See, e.g., People v. Washington, 402 P.2d 130, 139 (Cal. 1965) (Burke, J., dissenting) (recognizing that deterring the undertaking of inherently dangerous felonies is an “equally cogent purpose” of the felony-murder rule); State v. Williams, 254 So. 2d 548, 550 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1971) (citing this policy as the “obvious ultimate purpose” of the felony-murder rule).

 See NRS 200.030(1) (“Murder of the first degree is murder which is: . . . (b) [cjommitted in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of sexual assault, kidnapping, arson, robbery, burglary, invasion of the home, sexual abuse of a child, sexual molestation of a child under the age of 14 years or child abuse.”).

 Payne v. State, 81 Nev. 503, 506, 406 P.2d 922, 924 (1965).

 NRS 205.060(1) provides:
A person who, by day or night, enters any house, room, apartment, tenement, shop, warehouse, store, mill, barn, stable, outhouse or other building, tent, vessel, vehicle, vehicle trailer, semitrailer or house trailer, airplane, glider, boat or railroad car, with the intent to commit grand or petit larceny, assault or battery on any person or any felony, is guilty of burglary.

 See, e.g., People v. Miller, 297 N.E.2d 85, 88 (N.Y. 1973) (refusing to extend the merger doctrine where “the [¡legislature, in enacting the burglary and felony-murder statutes, did not exclude from the definition of burglary, a burglary based upon the intent to assault”); People v. Lewis, 791 P.2d 1152, 1154 (Colo. Ct. App. 1989) (“[T]here is no logic or reason to preclude a felony murder charge from being based upon a burglary charge that, in turn, is premised upon ... an intent to assault . . . .”).