Court Opinion

ID: 9616109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:43:38.237174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:55.081689
License: Public Domain

Hunter, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent. The majority by its application of the felony murder statute, RCW 9.48.040(2), has now converted the crime of manslaughter where a homicide results from a hunting accident to the crime of second-degree murder. The defendant in such a case, even in the absence of malice or intent or design to effect death, would be subject to conviction for second-degree murder by operation of law.
Our felony murder statute, RCW 9.48.040(2), provides:
The killing of a human being, unless it is excusable or justifiable, is murder in the second degree when—
(2) . . . perpetrated by a person engaged in the commission of, or in an attempt to commit, or in withdraw ing from the scene of, a felony other than those enumerated in RCW 9.48.030 [robbery, rape, burglary, larceny or arson in the first degree].
RCW 9.11.020(7) provides:
Every person who, under circumstances not amounting to assault in the first degree—
(7) While hunting any game or other animals or birds, shall shoot another;
Shall be guilty of assault in the second degree.
To avoid a normal charge of manslaughter being converted into second-degree murder where a homicide results from a second-degree assault under section (7), supra, the second-degree assault must be construed to have merged in the-homicide. A defendant would thereby be afforded the defense of lack of malice and intent to kill which would not be available under our felony murder statute if a second-*937degree assault be considered a crime independent of a resulting homicide.
The merger rule is not novel. It has long been followed by the state of New York to avoid under their homicide statutes the incongruous situation of converting second-degree murder cases and in some instances manslaughter to first-degree murder. “Felony Murder in New York,” 6 Fordham L. Rev. 43 (1937) states:
Murder in the second degree and some cases of manslaughter in the first and second degrees involve felonious assault on the person killed and yet if these assaults were not held to be merged in the homicide they would all be murder in the first degree, (p. 48)
The reason for requiring the merger rule under the New York statutes, which is applicable in this state as related to our manslaughter and second-degree murder statutes, is clearly stated by Judge Cardozo in People v. Moran, 246 N.Y. 100,158N.E.35 (1927):
Homicide is murder in the first degree when perpetrated with a deliberate and premeditated design to kill, or, without such design, while engaged in the commission of a felony. To make the quality of the intent indifferent, it is not enough to show that the homicide was felonious, or that there was a felonious assault which culminated in homicide .... Such a holding would mean that' every homicide, not justifiable or excusable, would occur in the commission of a felony, with the result that intent to kill and deliberation and premeditation would never be essential. . . . The felony that eliminates the quality of the intent must be one that is independent of the homicide and of the assault merged therein, as, e.g., robbery or larceny or burglary or rape. . . .
This killing was not done in circumstances excluding every possible hypothesis except one of homicide while engaged in another or independent felony. ... If the defendant was trying to escape, then the first felony, the assault upon Daskiewicz, was over. A second felony had begun, a felonious assault on Byrns. The felony then begun was not independent of the homicide. It was the homicide itself.
... In all this, there is a futile attempt to split into unrelated parts an indivisible transaction.
*938No violence can result to our second-degree murder statute, RCW 9.48.040(1), by applying the merger rule in the case of a second-degree assault resulting in death. Under the law of this state a person is presumed to intend the natural consequences of his voluntary acts. Second-degree murder is presumed in cases of a homicide. State v. Petty, 57 Wn.2d 513, 358 P.2d 136 (1961). If there is no evidence to rebut the presumption, a conviction for second-degree murder may be had under RCW 9.48.040(1). If, on the other hand, the defendant convinces the trier of fact that there was no design to effect death, then there can be no conviction for second-degree murder. It is not, therefore, necessary in a prosecution for second-degree murder that we permit a single act of homicide to be artificially divided into two felonies in order for the state to obtain a second-degree murder conviction.
It was the purpose of the legislature in enacting our felony murder statutes, RCW 9.48.030(3) and RCW 9.48.040(2), to accomplish the objective of supplying intent as a matter of law where a design to effect the death of the person killed cannot be presumed. This applies to those cases of separate felonies which are independent of the homicide itself.
The trial court improperly applied the felony murder statute, RCW 9.48.040(2), supra, in the instant case. The second-degree murder conviction should be reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial with the application of the merger rule as stated in this dissent.
Rosellini, C. J., concurs with Hunter, J.