ProfessorScott Caron
CaseCast™ – "What you need to know"
Brief Fact Summary. The Defendant, Dlugash (Defendant), was convicted of murder. He challenged the conviction on the basis that the victim was already deceased when Defendant fired a round of bullets at his head.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. A person can be convicted of attempting to commit a crime even though, if effected, it would not actually constitute a criminal offense.
Thus, upon the rationale that what was in the actor's own mind should be the standard for determining his dangerousness to society and, hence, his liability for attempted criminal conduct, the Penal Law has virtually eliminated the defense of impossibility in attempt cases by shifting the locus of analysis away from external considerations that might constitute elements of the crime attempted, such as the age of the victim, and toward the actor's mental frame of reference.
View Full Point of LawIssue. Can Defendant be held criminally liable for attempting to murder a person who may already have been dead?
Held. Yes.
The court agrees with the lower appellate court that Defendant’s murder conviction cannot stand because the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was alive when Defendant shot him. But insomuch as the jury convicted Defendant of murder, they necessarily found that he intended to kill a live human being. Defendant’s conviction can therefore rest on the lesser included offense of attempted murder. Provided Defendant believed that the victim was alive when he shot him – as the jury’s murder conviction demonstrates – he may be held criminally responsible for attempting to kill the victim, regardless of whether the victim was in fact alive at the time. It is no defense that the crime was factually or legally impossible provided that a crime would have been possible if the circumstances had in fact been as Defendant believed them to be.
Discussion. This case illustrates the modern trend regarding the doctrine of impossibility. Here, the focus is on what the Defendant believes is true, rather than what is actually true. This broader approach allows the state to punish morally culpable conduct that, because of extraneous circumstances, would not necessarily have resulted in any actual ha