Commonwealth v. Roebuck

• Decision Date: 23 November 2011
• Citation: 32 A.3d 613
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Stanley ROEBUCK, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

32 A.3d 613

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee

v.Stanley ROEBUCK, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued April 12, 2011.Decided Nov. 23, 2011.

David R. Crowley, Bellefont, for Amicus Curiae, PA Assoc. of Criminal Defense Lawyers & Public Defender Assoc. of PA.

Frankie C. Walker II, Pittsburgh, for Stanley Roebuck.

Jeffrey Michael Murray, Allegheny County Public Defender's Office, for Appellant Amicus Curiae, Allegheny County Public Defender's Office.Francesco Lino Nepa, Michael Wayne Streily, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County District Attorney's Office, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, McCAFFERY, JJ.

OPINION

Justice SAYLOR.

In this appeal, we consider whether it is possible, as a matter of law, to be convicted as an accomplice to third-degree murder.

The complete factual background is somewhat cumbersome. For present purposes, it is enough to say the Commonwealth presented evidence that the victim was lured to an apartment complex, where he was ambushed, shot, and mortally wounded. Appellant participated, with others, in orchestrating the events, but he did not shoot the victim.¹

For his role, Appellant was charged with, among other offenses, murder of the third degree. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(c). As he did not physically perpetrate the homicide, the Commonwealth relied upon accomplice theory, which is codified in Section 306 of the Crimes Code along with other complicity-based accountability principles. See id. § 306 (entitled “Liability for conduct of another; complicity” and establishing the terms of legal accountability for the conduct of another). The matter proceeded to a bench trial, and a verdict of guilt ensued.

On appeal, Appellant argued that there is no rational legal theory to support accomplice liability for third-degree murder. He rested his position on the following syllogism: accomplice liability attaches only where the defendant intends to facilitate or promote an underlying offense; third-degree murder is an unintentional killing committed with malice; therefore, to adjudge a criminal defendant guilty of third-degree murder as an accomplice would be to accept that the accused intended to aid an unintentional act, which is a logical impossibility.

The Superior Court did not directly refute either of the two premises underlying Appellant's argument,² but it differed with the conclusion. Initially, the court recognized that the complicity statute defines “accomplice” in terms of intentional promotion or facilitation of “the commission of the offense.” Id. § 306(c)(1). Nevertheless, the court highlighted the following statutory prescription pertaining to the requisite mens rea (or mental state):

When causing a particular result is an element of an offense, an accomplice in the conduct causing such result is an accomplice in the commission of that offense, if he acts with the kind of culpability, if any, with respect to that result that is sufficient for the commission of the offense.Id. § 306(d). As the “kind of culpability” predicate to third-degree murder entails malice, see, e.g., Commonwealth v. Santos, 583 Pa. 96, 101–02, 876 A.2d 360, 363 (2005),³ the court reasoned that, “[i]f one participates in a criminal act, which also demonstrates malice, and if a life is taken, one can be convicted of ... third-degree murder vicariously.” Roebuck, No. 1555 WDA 2007, slip op. at 14–15. In effect, the intermediate court held that complicity theory applies in third-degree murder scenarios—even if homicide was not the intended underlying crime—where the intentional acts demonstrate a disregard for human life amounting to malice. Accord Commonwealth v. Flanagan, 578 Pa. 587, 594 n. 2, 607, 610 n. 13, 854 A.2d 489, 493 n. 2, 501, 503 n. 13 (2004).⁴ Upon the appellate review of this and other claims, the judgment of sentence was affirmed.

This discretionary appeal was allowed to resolve Appellant's legal challenge to the application of complicity theory to murder of the third degree. See Commonwealth v. Roebuck, 606 Pa. 290, 291, 997 A.2d 1150, 1150 (2010) ( per curiam ). Our scope of review of such matters is plenary, and our standard of review is de novo. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Cousin, 585 Pa. 287, 294, 888 A.2d 710, 714 (2005).

Presently, Appellant maintains that accomplice liability for third-degree murder is a legal anomaly in view of his impossibility syllogism. In passing, Appellant observes that Section 306 of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code was derived from the Model Penal Code. See Model Penal Code § 2.06 (1962) (the “MPC” or the “Code”). Without developing how the Code actually treats accomplice liability, Appellant's brief segues into a discussion of a series of Superior Court opinions, as well as decisions from other jurisdictions, disapproving convictions based on grounds of logical and/or legal impossibility.⁵ Most of these cases involve criminal attempt and conspiracy, and Appellant acknowledges that the accomplice theory is distinct. Nevertheless, he urges that the same impossibility rationale should apply. See Brief for Appellant at 18–19 (“[T]he conclusion should be the same, since accomplice liability only attaches when one intends to aid another person in a crime, and, if such crime is third degree murder, the person aiding will be furthering an unintentional crime, which is logically impossible.”).

Appellant's most direct support derives from his citation to a subsequently disapproved plurality decision of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. See id. at 21 (citing State v. Etzweiler, 125 N.H. 57, 480 A.2d 870, 874 (1984) (plurality) (reasoning that “an accomplice's liability ought not extend beyond the criminal purposes that [the accomplice] shares”), superseded by N.H.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 626:8 (West 2001), and disapproved by State v. Anthony, 151 N.H. 492, 861 A.2d 773 (2004)). In his discussion, he also alludes to a concurring opinion authored by former Justice Souter of the United States Supreme Court, who, at the time, was a Justice of the state supreme court. In this responsive opinion, Justice Souter criticized the Model Penal Code's description of the culpability requisite to accomplice liability—after which Section 306(d) of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code was modeled—as he believed that it “fails to give any comprehensible, let alone fair, notice of intended effect [.]” Etzweiler, 480 A.2d at 877 (Souter, J., concurring).

Finally, Appellant references the dissent in a decision of this Court which discussed conspiracy to commit third-degree murder. See Commonwealth v. Weimer, 602 Pa. 33, 41–53, 977 A.2d 1103, 1107–15 (2009) (Todd, J., joined by Saylor, J.). Appellant suggests that this responsive opinion also confirms his impossibility rationale. See id. at 48, 977 A.2d at 1112 (“[T]o be guilty of conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, an individual would have to intend to commit an unintentional killing, a logical impossibility.”).

In reply and in relevant part, the Commonwealth posits that accomplice liability readily pertains to murder of the third degree. Consistent with the Superior Court's reasoning, the Commonwealth explains that it is the shared criminal intent motivating the underlying conduct (here, designing to stage a very dangerous altercation) which establishes the requisite criminal culpability. The Commonwealth offers, as an illustration, the Superior Court's decision in Commonwealth v. Kimbrough, 872 A.2d 1244 (Pa.Super.2005) ( en banc ) (undertaking sufficiency review and upholding a judgment of sentence for murder of the third degree based on accomplice liability). See Brief for Appellee at 24–26 (“It is obvious from the Superior Court's decision in Kimbrough that because the defendant, acting with the requisite malice, had put in motion the events that led to the victim's killing, he was legally responsible for the actions of the individual who actually fired the gun that killed the victim.”). According to the Commonwealth, it is both rational and sensible to hold one who aids another in malicious conduct to account to the same degree as the principal for foreseeable consequences of the wrongful actions. See id. at 23–24 (“If it was not necessarily the principal actor's intention to kill anyone and yet he can still be found guilty of third-degree murder ..., why is it that his accomplice cannot be guilty of the same thing when both of them engaged in the same plan to act violently?”).⁶

At the outset, it certainly is possible for a state legislature to employ complicity theory to establish legal accountability on the part of an accomplice for foreseeable but unintended results caused by a principal. Indeed, this was the express design of the American Law Institute's widely influential Model Penal Code.

To provide appropriate context in considering the MPC's treatment of complicity theory, it is helpful to review some of the Code's core theoretical underpinnings. Also impacting on this discussion, the MPC does not employ the term “malice” in its treatment of the crime of murder, but rather, expresses the concept as “reckless[ness] under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Model Penal Code § 210.2(1)(b). ⁷ To streamline the discourse, and particularly since Appellant's impossibility logic is grounded on the presence of unintended consequences flowing from an intentional act—and thus extends to any crime in which the mens rea pertaining to a necessary result is recklessness—much of the discussion below is framed in terms of recklessness.⁸

I. The Model Penal Code

A. The Code Generally

In addressing the terms of the Model Penal Code, it is important to bear in mind that the Code employs an elements approach to substantive criminal law, which recognizes that a single offense definition may require different culpable mental states for each objective offense element. See id. § 2.02, Explanatory Note (“The requirement of culpability applies to each ...