Court Opinion

ID: 9785668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:15:39.11766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:31.292746
License: Public Domain

Maupin, C. J., with whom Hardesty, J.,
agrees, concurring:
I concur in the result reached by the majority. I write separately to address the majority’s criticism of the district court in this matter.
The majority forcefully indicates that, based upon the State’s argument and the instructions given, “the jurors had no way of arriving at the conclusion that afterthought robbery cannot provide the predicate felony for felony murder,” and that “ ‘[jurors] should be provided with applicable legal principles by accurate, clear, and complete instructions specifically tailored to the facts ... of the case.1 This implies that the district court somehow should have known not to commit the error we have now identified “as a matter of first impression.’ ’ In my view, the district court did attempt to follow existing “applicable legal principles.”
To begin, the basis of the district court’s rejection of Nay’s afterthought robbery instruction arguably came from this court. Certainly, the district court could have reasonably determined that, as a matter of law, our decision in Thomas v. State2 precluded use of a jury instruction stating that an afterthought robbery does not implicate the felony-murder rule. As noted by the majority, we made the following statement in Thomas:
Thomas asserts next that the instructions should have stated that if the intent to rob was not formed until after the murders, then a robbery did not occur and the felony-murder rule did not apply. But the facts in Thomas clearly showed that the intent to rob preceded the murders. Moreover, “in robbery cases it is irrelevant when the intent to steal the property is formedL”3
A close reading of this passage makes it unclear, in retrospect, what we were trying to say in this portion of the opinion. A fair assessment of this language would indicate that the felony-murder *336rule is implicated even where the intent to commit robbery is not formed until after the victim has been killed. However, to the extent that we were attempting to convey such a proposition in Thomas, we improperly relied upon our previous decision in Chappell v. State.4 First, it is clear that the emphasized language taken from Chappell referred to the intent necessary to commit the crime of robbery itself. Second, the discussion in that case to which the emphasized observation in Thomas refers had absolutely no bearing upon the timing of the formation of the intent to commit robbery necessary to implicate the felony-murder rule. What we have done today is to clarify Thomas by expressly embracing the majority position on this question. We should acknowledge our mistake,5 rather than impliedly criticizing the district court for acting in accordance with that mistake.6
Because the felony-murder statute is reasonably susceptible to two inconsistent interpretations, we must apply the rale of “lenity” and interpret the measure as the majority has done today.7

 See majority opinion ante p. 334 (emphasis added) (quoting Crawford v. State, 121 Nev. 744, 754, 121 P.3d 582, 588 (2005)).

 120 Nev. 37, 83 P.3d 340 (2002).

 Id. at 46, 83 P.2d at 824 (emphasis added) (quoting Chappell v. State, 114 Nev. 1403, 1408, 972 P.2d 838, 841 (1998)).

 114 Nev. 1403, 972 P.2d 838.

 I realize that the author of the majority was not on the court when Thomas was decided. However, his authored opinion speaks for the court as a whole.

 The majority correctly notes that, to the extent that Thomas could be read to embrace the minority position on afterthought robberies, that embrace constituted obiter dictum. But district courts are entitled to assume that our dicta does state the “applicable law.”

 See Firestone v. State, 120 Nev. 13, 16, 83 P.3d 279, 281 (2004) (reiterating that criminal statutes must be strictly construed in favor of the accused).