Court Opinion

ID: 9797374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:19:14.905556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:54:39.711607
License: Public Domain

Shearing, J.,
with whom Rose and Leavitt, JL, agree,
dissenting:
I would affirm the judgment of the district court dismissing the first-degree felony-murder charge. The intent required to make the entry into the motel room a burglary, namely, the intent to apply force and violence to the victims, is the same intent that supports the felony-murder charge. The felony-murder rule raises a homicide to first-degree murder without requiring the State to prove thetraditional first-degree murder elements of willfulness, premeditation, and deliberation. The felonious intent involved in the underlying felony is regarded as sufficient intent to raise the resulting homicide to first-degree murder. When the felonious intent involved in committing the burglary is the same intent involved in the resulting homicide, the felony-murder rule is expanded beyond the reason for its existence.
I agree with the California Supreme Court in People v. Wilson when it said:
[T]he only basis for finding a felonious entry is the intent to commit an assault with a deadly weapon. When, as here, the entry would be nonfelonious but for the intent to commit the assault, and the assault is an integral part of the homicide and is included in fact in the offense charged, utilization of the felony-murder rule extends that doctrine “ ‘beyond any rational function that it is designed to serve.’ ” We have *340heretofore emphasized “that the felony-murder doctrine expresses a highly artificial concept that deserves no extension beyond its required application.”1
The California court concluded that the purpose of the felony-murder rule, to deter felons from killing negligently or accidentally, is not met when the underlying felony has the same general mental purpose as the homicide — to physically harm the victim.2 The court went on to say:
In [People v. Ireland3], we rejected the bootstrap reasoning involved in taking an element of a homicide and using it as the underlying felony in a second degree felony-murder instruction. We conclude that the same bootstrapping is involved in instructing a jury that the intent to assault makes the entry burglary and that the burglary raises the homicide resulting from the assault to first degree murder without proof of malice aforethought and premeditation. To hold otherwise, we would have to declare that because burglary is not technically a lesser offense included within a charge of murder, burglary constitutes an independent felony which can support a felony-murder instruction. . . . [A] burglary based on intent to assault with a deadly weapon is included in fact within a charge of murder, and cannot support a felony-murder instruction.4
In Payne v. State, this court agreed with California as to the purpose of the felony-murder rule, stating:
The original purpose of the felony-murder rule was to deter felons from killing negligently or accidentally by holding them strictly responsible for the killings that are the result of a felony or an attempted one. People v. Washington, 44 Cal.Rptr. 442, 402 P.2d 130 (1965). In the majority of jurisdictions, such a homicide acquires first degree murder status without the necessity of proving premeditation and deliberation. The heinous character of the felony is thought to justify the omission of the requirements of premeditation and deliberation.5
Here, when the defendants entered the building with the intent to harm the victims, the purpose of the felony-murder rule was not *341implicated because the subsequent harm to the victims was not negligent or accidental; harm to the victims was the very reason for the defendants’ entry into the motel room.
In Wilson, the California court reached a similar result, concluding that the felony-murder rule does not apply to a murder that follows from an assault with a deadly weapon.6 The California court based its decision on the merger doctrine.7 Although I agree with the California court’s conclusion, I do not agree that the merger doctrine applies.
Here, as NRS 205.070 specifically provides, each crime, the burglary and the homicide, can be charged separately. However, because the burglary and the homicide share the same underlying intent, the felony-murder rule should not apply. Application of the rule would bootstrap the homicide into first-degree murder simply because of the location of the homicide. Where, as here, the intent in both the underlying felony and the homicide is the same, application of the felony-murder rule does not further the rule’s intended purpose, to prevent accidental or negligent killing, but rather, extends the rule unjustly.
Felony murder itself is an anomaly in that, unlike most felonies, it does not require that the defendant intend the resulting harm; on the contrary, it addresses accidental or unintentional killing. Application of the felony-murder rule when the underlying felony involves the intent to do serious bodily harm defeats the purpose of the rule and unfairly elevates a crime to first-degree murder without requiring the State to prove willfulness, deliberation, and premeditation. The State here has every opportunity to prove second-degree murder.

 462 P.2d 22, 28 (Cal. 1969) (quoting People v. Phillips, 414 P.2d 353, 360 & n.5 (Cal. 1966) (quoting People v. Washington, 402 P.2d 130, 134 (Cal. 1965)), overruled on other grounds by People v. Flood, 957 P.2d 869 (Cal. 1998)).

 Id.

 450 P.2d 580 (Cal. 1969).

 Wilson, 462 P.2d at 28-29 (citation omitted).

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

 462 P.2d at 28-29.

 Id. at 29-30.