Court Opinion

ID: 9581760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:18:24.289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:13.742352
License: Public Domain

Holmes, J.,
concurring: As the author of the majority opinion in State v. Brown, 236 Kan. 800, 696 P.2d 954 (1985), and one of the dissenting justices in State v. Lucas, 243 Kan. 462, 759 P.2d 90 (1988), I feel obligated to comment upon my change of position as reflected by my joining with the majority in the present case.
It has been said that hard facts often make bad law. Brown was one of those cases. The unusual factual and procedural background of Brown need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say, the decision in Brown was motivated, in my opinion, by a sincere desire to reach the “right” result, but in doing so, the court lost sight of the applicable law of this state. In Lucas, the facts were so revolting and the actions of the defendant so heinous that I felt the law established by Brown was applicable and correct. I am now convinced that my position was not supported by the prior case law of Kansas, nor by that of most other states with statutes similar to our felony-murder statute.
Kansas has recognized the felony-murder rule since before statehood. Kan. Terr. Stat. 1855 ch. 48 § 1 provided in part:
“Every murder . . . which shall be committed in the perpetration, or attempt to perpetrate any . . . felony, shall be deemed murder in the first degree.”
In State v. Fisher, 120 Kan. 226, 243 Pac. 291 (1926), this court adopted the merger limitation to the broad application of the statute to “any felony.” In Fisher the defendant fired a gun at a car full of people trespassing upon and damaging his property and one of the shots killed a four-year-old occupant of the car. The driver of the vehicle had cut Fisher’s fences and was driving through his wheat field. After four fences had been cut, Fisher attempted to stop the driver by shooting at the tires and gasoline tank of the car. Unfortunately, one shot hit the young child in the *301car, killing him. Fisher was found guilty of murder in the first degree based upon the felony-murder rule. In reversing the conviction, Justice Harvey, writing for the court, stated:
“It is the contention of the state that if murder is committed in the perpetration or the attempt to perpetrate any other felony, it is murder in the first degree; hence, that if the boy, John Michael Foley, met his death at the hands of defendant, while defendant was committing an assault with a deadly weapon, under such circumstances that it amounted to a felony under any statute pertaining thereto, the offense is murder in the first degree. This contention cannot be sustained. The effect of it would be to make any homicide, not excusable or justifiable, which by our statute is defined to be manslaughter in any of the degrees, or murder in the second degree, to constitute murder in the first degree. In other words, there could, under this interpretation of the statute, be no such thing as any lower degree of homicide than murder in the first degree. In 29 C.J. 1107, it is said:
“ ‘Under a statute making the unintentional killing of another while engaged in the commission of a felony murder in the first degree, the other elements constituting the felony must be so distinct from that of the homicide as not to be an ingredient of the homicide indictable therewith or convictable thereunder.” (See, also, cases there cited.)’
“. . . Here the act of the defendant in doing the shooting is either murder in the first degree or some other offense. That same act cannot be made the basis, first, of some other felony, as manslaughter, and then that felony used as an element of murder in the first degree.” 120 Kan. at 230-31.
The merger doctrine, as adopted in Fisher, has been the law of Kansas since at least 1926. Later, the court imposed an additional limitation on the broad language of the felony-murder rule and required that the underlying felony must be “inherently dangerous” to support a charge of murder in the first degree based upon the perpetration of a felony. State v. Moffitt, 199 Kan. 514, 431 P.2d 879 (1967), overruled on other grounds State v. Underwood, 228 Kan. 294, 615 P.2d 153 (1980). Both court-imposed limitations are generally recognized as furthering the actual purpose and legislative intent of the statute. See State v. Lucas, 243 Kan. 462, Syl. ¶¶ 1, 2; Note, Criminal Law—Felony Murder in Kansas—The Prosecutor s New Device: State v. Goodseal, 26 Kan. L. Rev. 145 (1977).
I am now convinced that the attempt to graft an exception on the limitation imposed by Fisher is erroneous and not supported by any valid legal principle. If the merger doctrine is good law, and I think it is, then any attempt to carve out an exception to cover unintentional or accidental deaths resulting from child abuse should be done by the legislature. If the legislature be*302lieves that such an exception should be the law, it should adopt such a statute. Until it does, the limitations imposed upon the broad language of the statute remain the law of Kansas. I concur in the majority opinion.