ProfessorScott Caron
CaseCast™ – "What you need to know"
Brief Fact Summary. The Defendant was convicted of both felony child abuse and second-degree murder after beating her two-year-old daughter to death.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. Where the conduct constituting a felony is the sole cause of death, i.e. assault, the felony “merges” with the homicide into a single crime.
Issue. Was the Defendant properly convicted of both felony child abuse and second-degree murder?
Held. No.
The offense of felony child abuse can occur by virtue of both active and passive conduct, i.e. by direct assault or neglect. In each case, the conduct must be willful and the conduct must be committed “under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death.”
A person is guilty of felony murder if a death occurs in the course of a commission of a felony. However, where the felony is an integral part of the homicide, one cannot be guilty of both the felony and felony murder, but rather, the crimes merge into the single crime of murder.
Here, the Defendant willfully inflicted physical pain on a child. Said conduct was the basis of the felony child abuse charge and was in turn the conduct that caused her death. Therefore, the merger rule applies, and the Defendant cannot be guilty of both the felony child abuse and murder.
A statute must be definite enough to provide a standard of conduct for those whose activities are proscribed as well as a standard for the ascertainment of guilt by the courts called upon to apply it.
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