Court Opinion

ID: 9652932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:35:28.694104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:55.240514
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I do not believe it is constitutional to charge defendant with first degree murder and convict him of second degree murder.
No matter what the old law may have been about first degree felony murder involving deliberation and premeditation, the current first degree murder statute does not. It became effective May 26, 1977 and it provides as follows:
“Any person who unlawfully kills another human being without a premeditated intent to cause the death of a particular individual is guilty of the offense of first degree murder if the killing was committed in the perpetration of or in the attempt to perpetrate arson, rape, robbery, burglar, or kidnapping.”
Its predecessor, § 559.007, RSMo Supp. 1975, which became effective September 28, 1975, was almost in the same language and provided as follows:
“The unlawful killing of a human being when committed without a premeditated intent to cause the death of a particular individual but when committed in the perpetration of or in the attempt to perpetrate arson, rape, robbery, burglary, or kidnapping is murder in the first degree.”
Twice within two years, as we see, the legislature has enacted statutes eliminating premeditated intent as an element of first degree murder and requiring only that the killing be done in the perpetration and attempted perpetration of certain felonies. Likewise the MAI-CR2d instructions for first degree murder contain no finding of intent, but simply that defendant caused the death of the victim in committing or attempting to commit a particular felony. See MAI-CR2d 15.12 as typical.
Second degree murder, however, requires willful, premeditated killing with malice aforethought. State v. Franco, 544 S.W.2d 533, 535 (Mo.banc 1976), cert. den. 431 U.S. 957, 97 S.Ct. 2682, 53 L.Ed.2d 275 (1977). See MAI-CR2d 15.14 the required instruction on conventional second degree murder.
I fail to see where charging a defendant with first degree murder in any way amounts to a charge of second degree murder. As the principal opinion agrees, second degree murder is not a lesser included offense of first degree murder, and while the principal opinion does not agree with this, I do not believe it is a degree of murder inferior to that charged in the amended information in the present case.
To borrow from Shakespeare, what’s in a name? Providing by statute, § 556.220, that the jury may find defendant, when charged with something else, “guilty of any degree of such offense inferior to that charged”, and then calling an offense first degree murder in one statute, § 565.003, and saying in another statute, § 565.004, that all other kinds of murder, with certain exceptions, shall be murder in the second degree, does not mean that second degree murder is somehow “inferior” to first degree murder. One requires premeditation, the other does not. At the time of the offense in question, one involved a penalty of life imprisonment, the other permitted a heavier penalty.
The amended information in the case before us charged first degree murder, for which the penalty at time of the offense was life imprisonment. Section 565.008.2, RSMo Supp.1977. But second degree murder carried a heavier penalty at that time. Imprisonment upon conviction could be as long as 200 years, as this court declared in State v. Stephens, 507 S.W.2d 18, 22 (Mo. banc 1974), or even 500 or 1000 years. I would not call second degree murder a degree of murder inferior to first degree murder when the penalty for the former is higher than the latter.
I think the matter is properly put in an early case, State v. Shoemaker, 7 Mo. 177, 180 (1841), a forgery case. That case discussed the fourteenth section of the 9th article of the act concerning crimes and *839punishments (R.C. 1835, p. 214), the predecessor of § 556.220. The 1835 statute likewise provided that the jury may find the defendant guilty of any degree of the offense “inferior to that charged in the indictment.” The court said:
“[T]he fourteenth section could not have been intended to dispense with the rules of the common law, and I may add, of common justice, that the allegation and proofs must correspond. If the inferior degree of offence, of which the party is convicted, be included in the allegations of the indictment, a conviction of such inferior degree is consistent with established principles. But if the other of-fence be of a totally dissimilar nature, and no count in the indictment contains any description of the inferior offence proved, no judgment could be given against the defendant upon such proof. If, for example, the indictment charges a forgery in the second degree, which our statute declares to consist in counterfeiting coin, or in passing or attempting to pass such coin, the defendant cannot be legally convicted of forgery in the third degree, which consists in making false entries in books with fraudulent intent, &c.”
Here the offense of which defendant was convicted — second degree murder — is of a totally dissimilar nature from the offense with which he was accused. He was convicted of an offense requiring a definite intention to kill the victim. He was acquitted of the offense with which he was charged and convicted of one with which he was not charged. I do not believe this can constitutionally be done and I do not believe that a statute which purports to permit a jury to find defendant guilty of an offense different from that charged but which is said to be “inferior to that charged in the indictment” can make it constitutional.
Designating something as “inferior to that charged in the indictment” does not give notice of what it is anymore than designating it as “superior to that charged in the indictment” would. Whether second degree murder is “inferior to” or “superior to first degree murder, it is a different offense, with different elements. Defendant was not charged with second degree murder or constitutionally warned that he could be convicted of it under the amended information filed against him. “There can be no trial, conviction or punishment for a crime without a formal and sufficient accusation.” State v. McKinley, 341 Mo. 1186, 111 S.W.2d 115, 118 (1937).
Additionally, if murder requires an intent to kill, then the legislature cannot define it without the intent to kill, although this is exactly what is attempted in the present first degree murder statute. Second degree murder, which does require an intent to kill, cannot be an inferior grade of an offense which requires no intent to kill, simply because the latter is also called murder.
I would reverse the second degree murder conviction.