I was just watching America’s Most Wanted and they described an incident wherein a pair of police officers in a car were chasing after a suspect. The suspect went onto a narrow country road where the speed limit was under 25. The cops follow him, driving extremely fast. The police car loses control and crashes, and one of the officers was unfortunately killed.
The suspect (Mark David Wood is still at large, and according to the show, faces charges of second degree homicide.
However, I don’t understand how he could be charged with homicide if he did not directly lead to the officer’s death. It was their decision to follow him on the narrow road at an extremely high speed, so how could he be charged in the man’s death? I don’t have a good understanding of criminal law, so maybe someone could tell me how it is determined that the suspect was guilty of the police crash, and not that it was simply an accident in which no particular person was at fault?
IANAL, but I think this would be called felony murder. If fleeing from the cops is a felony in Michigan, then that is what they are charging him with, or some variation thereof.
The felony murder rule holds that a death that occurs during the commission of an inherently dangerous felony can result in a murder charge. It appears from your link that the suspect is in Michigan. I don’t know what Michigan’s felony murder rule is, but at least in California, the death of a police officer in a chase is not felony murder (link is to a blawg):
In Michigan, it appears that felony murder requires an intent to kill, as stated on the Michigan prosecutors’ website:
I believe Gfactor is in Michigan and Bricker practices criminal law. I’d be interested in their take on whether this is an aggressive charge if, as the OP posits, the death was accidental.
Around my old neck of the woods a bit over two decades ago a young man was fleeing on a motorcycle when the cop (who knew who the motorcyclist was, yes thats important) chasing him hit a tree and sadly died.
The local prosecutor wanted to charge the motorcyclist for murder of some sort or another that slips my mind at the moment. But when it came out that the cop knew the kid who was on the bike (he was 16) and openly radioed it in prior to the crash, they decided not to prosecute for the big charges under the understanding that chasing the motorcycle on the unpaved one lane roads when he knew who the person was to be not right?
The cop in question was my uncle so I guess I am familiar with it and most of my family seemed to understand, through the grief of course. I will have to ask my mother for more precise details as I was not in the area when this happened.
Sidenote I know the guy who took off, and every time I visit the area he has a new set of flowers on my uncles grave.
But I’ll leave it too the lawyers to answer the how’s and why’s someone can be charged with murder in some cases and not in others.
One time I was chatting with UNC’s (University of North Carolina) campus police (incidentally, it was during the filming of the movie Patch Adams), who informed me that they won’t chase suspects/criminals across campus because if the suspect somehow gets hurt during the chase, the police could get sued for damages.
I have bolded the felony-murder portion of the statute. As you can see, there is another problem. If they were pursuing a suspect, the suspect was arguably still cmitting the felony. http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/1789/. But it would have to be one of the felonies listed in the statute. Of course, the same thing applies to felony murder, because felony murder only applies to dangerous felonies.
I can see a prosecutor arguing that the defendant’s flight caused the police offers’ death pretty easily. There are two remaining questions:
Does the defendant’s state of mind meet the mens rea requirement for the crime? The prosecutor will argue that the defendant acted knowing that fleeing police at high speed was likely to injure someone. That’s all the prosecutor has to show. The defendant will argue that he knew that he might injure someone else or himself by fleeing but not the police (irrelevant) or that he didn’t think that fleeing the police at high speed was dangeroud (dubious or unreeasonable).
Then the defendant will argue that his conduct was not the proximate cause of the officers’ death. He’ll argue that the officers’ negligent driving was an intervening cause. But by driving fast and fleeing the police, the prosecutor will argue, the defendant should have expected that the officers might be injured. This case suggest that the defendant’s conduct was the proximate cause of the deaths. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=ks&vol=supct/2000/20001027/&invol=83433(police negligence is foreseeable).
Is the defendant guilty of first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, or some other offense?
The defendant can probably only be convicted of first degree murder if he was violating on of the listed laws when he fled. We don’t have enough information to know if he was.
In Michigan any murder that is not first degree murder, is second degree murder. For the reasons discussed above, the prosecution probably has a pretty good case.
While this may indeed be the policy of the UNC campus police, and while IANANCL, I find it hard to believe that a suspect fleeing from police pursuit would prevail in such a suit. First, the suspect’s flight would be contributory to any injury (had s/he stopped running s/he wouldn’t have been hurt). Second, the officers, as agents of the state, could very well have immunity for acts undertaken in the performance of their duties. hard to know without more specific information on NC statute and case law, but I’m pretty confident in calling bullshit on this.
The rationale for the felony murder rule - the precise paramerters of which vary from state to state - is that the felon has set up an inherently dangerous situation and, so, if someone is killed, the felon should be held accountable as if he (or she) had actually murdered that someone. In other words, intent to commit the felony notwithstanding the risk that someone might get killed is deemed sufficient to satisfy the mens rea requirement on the felony murder charge.
And Here is an article that collects cases on liability for injuries that occur as a result of a police chase. Not surprisingly, the courts go out of their way to avoid finding police liable. Here is the part that makes Otto’s point:
Here is a good survey of police liability from about ten years ago:
Seems that the sticking point here is “high speed chase.” What makes a chase “high speed”? If I’m on (for example) I-75 in Michigan doing the customary 80 mph (the flow of traffic) and the cops are chasing me, the traffic is normally so congested that I won’t be able to “escape” at all. But if I don’t stop, and merely stay in traffic, am I at the same risk as a worse type of criminal if a policeman dies?
Speeding alone won’t subject you to 1st degree murder liability under the felony- murder statute. And it’s not like shooting into a crowd, which typically would subject you to liability under the depraved heart theory.
So you’d be looking at involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, under the statutes cited above. A conviction for negligent homicide would be pretty easy to get:
Since you are required to stop for the police, fleeing them at 80 mph could easily be considered an immoderate rate of speed.
There’s the case of Lisl Auman link who was convicted of felony murder for actions her accomplice took, which she herself had been caught and was handcuffed in the back of a police car.
The conviction was overturned and she gets a new trial, due to improper jury instructions.
The reason for reversal was that the trial court improperly instructed the jury about theft, which was a predicate crime for felony-murder.
The SCOTUS recently held, in a similar vein, that a drug conspiracy does not terminate when the police have seized the drugs and arrested two of the participants–even for those who join the conspiracy after it has been thwarted. UNITED STATES V. JIMENEZ RECIO.