If you were committing a felony offense and someone died, it could lead to a murder charge.
Consider this scenario: you are out with friends when one of them decides to rob an empty store. You wait in the car, planning to be the “getaway driver.” Your friends come running out, shouting at you to drive, and tell you that when they broke into the store, there was somebody there, and he died. Can you be charged with murder?
In this situation, you actually can be charged with murder under the California felony murder rule. This rule makes a person guilty of the crime of murder if either he or someone he was committing a crime with kills a person while committing a felony, even if that person died by accident.
This law is an exception to the normal rules for murder, which generally required that you either have an intent to kill someone or acted with a reckless disregard for human life. The felony murder rule allows a prosecutor to charge a defendant with murder as long as he or she can prove that the victim was killed during the commission of a certain California felony.
Felony murder is a serious crime. A skilled murder defense lawyer in Los Angeles, CA can represent a person charged with this offense, and force the prosecution to its burden of proving every element of the crime, including that the death of the victim occurred during the commission of a certain felony crime.
To qualify for the felony murder rule, the felony that is committed or attempted has to either be listed in California’s first degree murder law or be an “inherently dangerous” felony. California courts have defined inherently dangerous felonies as any crime that is “inherently dangerous to human life.” This could be anything that would create a substantial risk that someone will be killed, such as possessing a bomb in a residential area, burning a car, or making meth in a home. However, there are some other felony offenses that California courts have found to not be inherently dangerous, such as false imprisonment, escaping from a city or county jail, and treating a patient without a medical license. A skilled murder defense lawyer in Los Angeles, CA can argue to the court that the felony that you committed or attempted was not inherently dangerous — and as such, you should not be subjected to the felony murder rule.
Felony murder is a complex crime, as it is based on the facts of each case, and can be charged whether the killing was accidental or even if the person died through no action of the people committing the crime (for example, if the person in the example above had a heart attack when the friends entered the store). A skilled murder defense lawyer in Los Angeles, CA can take the facts, investigate them thoroughly, apply the law, and make a strong argument as to why felony murder charges should not be applied in this particularly case.
The Chambers Law Firm represent clients in the Los Angeles metro area who have been charged with felony murder and all other types of murder. Contact our office today at 714-760-4088 or dchambers@clfca.com to schedule a free initial consultation, and learn how we can help you if you have been charged with a crime.
