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Supreme Court of California - 414 P.2d 353, 64 Cal. 2d 574
Tags: Criminal law, Felony murder
tl;dr:
Grand theft by false pretenses is not an inherently dangerous crime, so it cannot serve as the predicate for felony murder.Video Summary
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A chiropractor was convicted of second-degree murder after a young patient died from cancer. However, the conviction was overturned because the prosecution failed to establish a causal relationship between the defendant's conduct and the patient's death. The patient's parents removed her from the hospital and canceled her surgery after the defendant falsely promised a cure without surgery, leading to the patient's death. The court clarified the three-part instruction on murder in the second degree, which includes scenarios that can result in a murder charge. The third scenario involves a death that occurs during the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate a felony. The court found that only inherently dangerous felonies can support the application of the felony-murder rule and that the court looks at the elements of the felony in the abstract to assess the peril to human life inherent in any given felony.
The dissenting judge argues that the majority made an error in reversing the conviction of second degree murder based solely on the trial court's giving of a felony-murder instruction. The jury was instructed that malice aforethought was necessary for a murder conviction, and that malice could be found not only through the felony-murder rule but also if the killing was committed with an abandoned and malignant heart. The defendant, a chiropractor, was found to have induced the parents of an 8-year-old girl with fast-growing eye cancer to cancel her operation and place her under his care, despite evidence showing he was behind on rent and charged the parents $500 in advance for her treatment, making an additional profit by selling pills for her at a 100 percent mark-up. The defendant was aware that canceling the girl's surgery and placing her under his care would endanger her life, as he recognized the danger of her condition and knew that her case required medical attention which he was not going to give her. Despite knowing that he could not cure cancer, he charged the girl's parents for treatment and made a profit by selling pills for her at a 100 percent mark-up.
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