King v. Commonwealth

Court of Appeals of Virginia
368 S.E.2d 704, 6 Va. App. 351 (1988)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

For a defendant to be convicted of felony-murder, the death must be caused by an act of a felon that is committed in furtherance of the underlying felony. A death resulting from circumstances merely coincidental to the felony, without a direct causal link between the felonious act and the death, is insufficient to support a conviction.

Facts:

Nelson James King and his copilot, Mark Lee Bailey, flew a plane owned by Wallace Thrasher as part of a drug smuggling operation.
The plane was carrying over five hundred pounds of marijuana destined for Dublin, Virginia.
King was a licensed pilot; Bailey, who was not licensed, was piloting the plane at the time.
While flying through heavy cloud cover and fog near North Carolina, the pilots became lost.
In an effort to navigate, Bailey flew the plane at a lower altitude while King examined maps.
The airplane crashed into Fancy Gap Mountain, killing Bailey almost instantly.
King was thrown from the plane and survived.

Procedural Posture:

Nelson James King was charged in a Virginia trial court with felony homicide for the death of Mark Lee Bailey.
A jury convicted King of second-degree murder under the felony-murder statute.
The jury recommended a six-year prison sentence.
King (appellant) appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

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Issue:

Does Virginia's second-degree felony-murder statute apply to convict a defendant for the accidental death of a co-felon when the death was not caused by an act in furtherance of the underlying felony, but rather by circumstances merely coincidental to it?

Opinions:

Majority - Coleman, J.

No. A conviction under the felony-murder statute is improper because the death was not caused by an act of the felons in furtherance of the felony. The felony-murder rule imputes malice from the underlying felony to the act of killing, but it does not impute the act of killing itself. For the statute to apply, the homicide must be a direct consequence of the felony, meaning the death must stem from an act committed by a felon that was intended to further the criminal enterprise. In this case, the cause of Bailey's death was his own piloting and adverse weather conditions, which were merely coincidental to the felony of drug possession. The commission of the felony only explains why King and Bailey were at that location; it did not cause the plane crash. A mere temporal or 'but for' connection between the felony and the death is insufficient; there must be a direct causal relationship.

Analysis:

This decision significantly narrows the application of the felony-murder doctrine in Virginia by rejecting a simple 'but for' causation test and requiring a direct causal link between the felony and the death. It establishes that a death merely occurring during a felony is insufficient; the death must be a direct consequence of an act taken to advance the criminal enterprise. This precedent protects defendants from criminal liability for purely fortuitous or coincidental deaths that are not a foreseeable result of the felonious conduct itself. Future cases will need to distinguish between acts that are merely part of the setting of a crime and those that are causally responsible for a homicide.

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