Terry was a Montanan, Terry was a thief, Terry broke into Liam’s house to steal a side of beef. Unfortunately, Liam was still in the house at the time. Even more unfortunately, Liam had rigged part of his property with a mantrap intended to be fatal to intruders.
(Note to those unaware: The mantrap is illegal. You aren’t allowed to deliberately make it potentially fatal to trespass on your property. I don’t know if this interacts with the castle doctrine, assuming the person who set the trap is home when it’s triggered, or if it’s even legally possible to validly claim self-defense if the weapon you used is illegal.)
If Liam triggers the trap during the burglary and is killed by it, is Terry guilty of homicide under the felony murder rule?
I don’t know about Montana, but in some/many areas, the felony murder rule only applies to either specific enumerated felonies, or felonies of violence. I’m not sure if a mantrap offense counts as a violent felony (is the nature of the offense just possession of the weapon, or is it its use that is the gravamen?)
E.g. if you knowingly pass counterfeit money (i.e. money is counterfeit, you know it, and you intend to defraud with it) to a bank teller, and the bank teller has a heart attack after discovering that they accepted counterfeit money (or they get a paper cut from one of the fake bills and get fatal sepsis, etc.), this would probably not be felony murder even if the counterfeit money offense counts as a felony, since passing counterfeit money isn’t a crime of violence and a reasonable person wouldn’t foresee a substantial danger of death from the offense. With a rape or an armed robbery, the danger that a victim or bystander could be killed is much more palpable and likely.
Usually, the murder has to be committed in furtherance of the felony.
If the trap itself, regardless of what the trap does, is a felony, the murder isn’t in furtherance of committing the felony (putting the trap), because the trap felony is already completed.
NOTE (assuming that it is not a typo) in the OP it is HOMEOWNER (Liam) who is killed by his own mantrap during the robbery.
I guess the point is, is there an exemption to the felony burglary rule that excludes death by your own illegal acts (presumably it would a similar situation if he’d set fire to himself on his own meth lab, or blown himself up with an illegally owned hand grenade).
The Montana law (section 45-5-102 of the Montana Code) specifies that a person must “cause” the death of another person which is sketchy enough if Liam just stumbles into his own trap. I guess the argument could be made that he would not panic into his own trap were it not for the crimes being committed against him.
Burglary is one of the enumerated felonies however, so if it is ruled that Terry “caused” Liam’s death, it would look to me like he is on the hook for deliberate homicide…
"45-5-102. Deliberate homicide. (1) A person commits the offense of deliberate homicide if:
(a) the person purposely or knowingly causes the death of another human being; or
(b) the person attempts to commit, commits, or is legally accountable for the attempt or commission of robbery, sexual intercourse without consent, arson, burglary, kidnapping, aggravated kidnapping, felonious escape, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault, or any other forcible felony and in the course of the forcible felony or flight thereafter, the person or any person legally accountable for the crime causes the death of another human being.
(2) A person convicted of the offense of deliberate homicide shall be punished by death as provided in 46-18-301 through 46-18-310, unless the person is less than 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the offense, by life imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than 10 years or more than 100 years, except as provided in 46-18-219 and 46-18-222. "
Just as a little background, Montana’s homicide laws are a little funky. We don’t have the whole 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree thing-- there’s just deliberate homicide (which includes felony murder) and negligent. Basically just what would be called murder and manslaughter. Intent is not part of these laws, so there’s no difference between premeditated and non. There is also “mitigated deliberate homicide” which allows for lesser penalties if there’s “severe mental or emotional stress”. This is basically there because we don’t have an insanity plea (again, because the law does not consider intent), but it doesn’t apply to the felony murder provision.
It seems to me that the letter of the felony murder rule is extremely wide with regards to “causing” a death. Some of the examples I’ve heard where the felony murder rule would apply are such “butterfly effect” type things like a teller has a heart attack during a robbery or a responding police officer gets in a car wreck. But it also seems like prosecutors and juries alike are fairly reluctant to actually use the rule in a situation like this where causation and malicful intent is really iffy. I would suspect in this case that Terry absolutely could be charged with deliberate homicide (especially since the Montana statute doesn’t take intent into account), but whether the local prosecutor would choose to and if a jury would convict is a lot less certain/likely.
I think you would need more facts. Did he wake up and groggily stumble into the trap? was he chased into it? thrown into it? did the intruder see it? realize what it was? did he set it off trying to use it against the intruder? was he in danger?
Facts usually drive cases like these - every little detail counts.
But the main point of the OP seems to me whether the fact it was an illegal man trap has any bearing on the outcome.
I’m assuming there are circumstances in which a home owner killing themselves accidentally during a burglary would fall under the felony murder rule (e.g. fleeing from the burglar and falling down stairs, maybe even shooting themselves accidentally with their own, legally owned, handgun ?). In the same circumstances does the illegality of the man-trap affect the outcome ?
griffin1977 has it: I’m wondering if the fact Liam was killed directly due to his own illegal actions is more relevant under the law than the fact Terry very indirectly caused Liam to die.
No. Let’s say two burglars, Al and Bob, are breaking into a house. The homeowner, Chuck, shoots and kills Al. Bob can then be charged with Al’s murder even though Chuck killed him because the cause of the shooting was Bob’s burglary. The fact that Al was also committing that same burglary does not exonerate Bob.
I believe the prosecutor would have to show that Terry’s break-in had some effect on Liam’s actions, even if it was unintentional. If, for example, the sound of Terry breaking a window woke Liam up and caused him to stumble accidentally into his mantrap, the prosecutor would argue that if Terry hadn’t broken in, Liam would have remained asleep and lived.
I knew a guy (this was in New York) who was serving time because he broke into a house. The homeowner caught him in the act and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. Then the homeowner had a heart attack and died. The prosecutor was able to argue that the heart attack was caused by the stress of the incident and the burglar was convicted of felony homicide.