holding that first-degree felony murder includes “a variety of unintended homicides resulting from reckless behavior, or ordinary negligence, or pure accident; it embraces both calculated conduct and acts committed in panic or rage, or under the dominion of mental illness, drugs, or alcohol; and it condemns alike consequences that are highly probable, conceivably possible, or wholly unforeseeable.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that first-degree felony murder includes “a variety of unintended homicides resulting from reckless behavior, or ordinary negligence, or pure accident; it embraces both calculated conduct and acts committed in panic or rage, or under the dominion of mental illness, drugs, or alcohol; and it condemns alike consequences that are highly probable, conceivably possible, or wholly unforeseeable.”
- holding a seventeen year-old's sentence of life imprisonment for felony murder was unconstitutional as applied where the offender fatally shot his victim out of fear for his life in the course of trying to steal marijuana plants from the victim's farm when the victim-who had previously made threats about shooting the defendant for being on his property-began approaching the defendant with a shotgun in his possession.
- holding the felony-murder rule does not create a conclusive presumption of the existence of an element of the crime in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment since malice aforethought is not an element of felony murder
- concluding that the plainer the intent to commit the offense, the more likely that steps taken in the early stages of the commission of the crime will satisfy the overt act requirement
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Abrogated on other grounds by People v. Chun, 45 Cal. 4th 1172 (2009)
34 Cal.3d 441, 478-479 (Dillon), abrogated on another ground, as stated in People v. Chun (2009) 45 Cal.4th 1172, 1186
Superseded by statute, as recognized in People v. Chun
34 Cal.3d 441, 478 (Dillon), superseded by statute on another ground as stated in People v. Chun (2009) 45 Cal.4th 1172, 1186
Distinguished
Distinguished by People v. Stankewitz, 51 Cal. 3d 72 (1990)
Dillon, however, is plainly distinguishable.
Distinguished by People v. Rose, 182 Cal. App. 3d 813 (1986)
Dillon, supra, 34 Cal.3d 441, is readily distinguishable from the case at bar.
Distinguished by People v. Munoz, 157 Cal. App. 3d 999 (1984)
) Beyond this point we part company with Dillon.
The opinion
KINGSLEY, J. *
I concur in Justice Mosk’s opinion.
I have read with interest the scholarly opinion by Justice Kaus on the subject of “jury nullification,” but do not agree that that doctrine has anything to do with the case at bench. The concept of “jury nullification” is one that permits a jury to ignore the plain letter of the law and administer what those 12 persons, as a body, regard the socially more appropriate verdict in a particular case. The doctrine represents what Dean Pound called a “soft spot” in the law, which permitted the law to yield in a special case rather than cast doubt on the justice of the applicable law in general.
*494 Here, however, the majority of the court is not ignoring the law. The constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishment is, itself, a vital part of the law which we apply in the case of young Mr. Dillon. It is now settled that that provision in both the federal and California Constitutions prohibits the application of an otherwise valid sanction to a particular person under particular circumstances. We are not ignoring the law of California; we are applying the whole law.
Assigned by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.