The State v. Jackson, S10A0070.

CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
Citation287 Ga. 646,697 S.E.2d 757
Docket NumberNo. S10A0070.,S10A0070.
PartiesThe STATEv.JACKSON et al.
Decision Date28 June 2010

Patrick H. Head, District Attorney, Dana J. Norman, Jesse D. Evans, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellant.

Tony L. Axam, Calvin A. Edwards, Jr., Atlanta, for appellees.

NAHMIAS, Justice.

Appellees, defendants Carlester Jackson and Warren Woodley Smith, allegedly conspired with Jerold Daniels to rob a drug dealer at gunpoint. The victim, however, also turned out to be armed, and he shot and killed Daniels in self-defense. A Cobb County grand jury indicted Jackson and Smith on three counts of felony murder along with other offenses. The defendants moved to dismiss the felony murder counts pursuant to State v. Crane, 247 Ga. 779, 279 S.E.2d 695 (1981). The trial court granted the motion to dismiss, and the State now appeals, asking us to overrule Crane. After thorough review, we conclude that Crane should be overruled, and we therefore reverse. The causation issue presented should be decided by a properly instructed jury at trial, using the customary proximate cause standard.

This should be an easy case for a Georgia appellate court. The question presented is what the term “causes” means as used in the felony murder statute. See OCGA § 16-5-1(c) (“A person also commits the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony, he causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.”). In cases both before and after Crane, this Court interpreted that very term to require “proximate causation.” In addition, there are dozens of other cases from this Court and the Court of Appeals, before and after Crane, that hold that the same term as used in other homicide statutes and in many other criminal and civil contexts means proximate cause.

This case is difficult only because of Crane. There, in a short opinion that did not mention any of Georgia's extensive causation case law, the Court held that the word “causes” in the felony murder statute requires not proximate causation, but that the death be “caused directly” by one of the parties to the underlying felony. Id. at 779, 279 S.E.2d 695. Applying this new and more restrictive conception of causation, the Court concluded that a defendant cannot be found guilty of felony murder when the intended victim of the underlying felony kills the defendant's accomplice, because that death is “caused directly” by the victim rather than the defendant. See id.

As shown below, the opinion in Crane was poorly reasoned, and perhaps because it is so incongruous with the rest of Georgia law, it has not been consistently applied by this Court or the Court of Appeals in the ensuing three decades. Its holding has not been applied uniformly in the specific context of felony murder, nor has its reasoning been followed in construing the same causation language in other homicide statutes. The relevant facts of this case, however, are almost identical to Crane's, and so today we must either reaffirm Crane or reject it. After careful consideration, we have concluded that Crane must be overruled. Stare decisis is an important doctrine, but it is not a straightjacket. Crane's age and statutory nature are outweighed by the other factors undermining its precedential authority, and it is important that the Court refute its reasoning to insure that the case can no longer be cited in efforts to pollute other streams of our law.

The Factual and Procedural Background of This Case

1. The parties stipulated, for purposes of the motion to dismiss, that Jackson, Smith, and Daniels conspired to commit an armed robbery of someone who the defendants believed was a drug dealer. Daniels approached the intended victim armed with a handgun, with Jackson nearby and Smith waiting in the getaway vehicle. The victim, who was also armed, exchanged gunfire with Daniels, and he ultimately shot and killed Daniels in self-defense. Jackson and Smith were later arrested. The indictment charged the defendants with, among others offenses, felony murder. Tracking the statutory language, Count 1 alleged that both Jackson and Smith “did cause the death of Jerold Daniels, a human being, ... while in the commission of a felony, to wit: Aggravated Assault.” The indictment charged Smith with two more counts, alleging that he caused Daniels's death while in the commission of the felony of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

The defendants moved to dismiss the felony murder charges. They argued that because the victim fired the shot that killed their co-conspirator, they did not directly cause Daniels's death. The trial court, bound by this Court's decision in Crane, granted the motion to dismiss. The State filed this direct appeal under OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(1), asking us to overrule Crane.

“Cause” in Georgia's Homicide Statutes Means Proximate Cause

2. The felony murder statute provides that [a] person also commits the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony he causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.” OCGA § 16-5-1(c) (emphasis supplied). As in Crane, the question in this case is whether a defendant who commits a felony whose intended victim kills a co-conspirator “causes” that death. The answer should be straightforward. Georgia is a proximate cause state. When another meaning is not indicated by specific definition or context, the term “cause” is customarily interpreted in almost all legal contexts to mean “proximate cause”-[t]hat which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces injury, and without which the result would not have occurred.” Black's Law Dictionary 1103 (5th ed. 1979).

Thus, this Court has explained that proximate cause is the standard for criminal cases in general. See, e.g. Skaggs v. State, 278 Ga. 19, 19-20, 596 S.E.2d 159 (2004) (“In a criminal case, proximate cause exists when the accused's ‘act or omission played a substantial part in bringing about or actually causing the (victim's) injury or damage and ... the injury or damage was either a direct result or a reasonably probable consequence of the act or omission.’ (citations omitted)). We have also said that proximate cause is the standard for homicide cases in general. See, e.g. James v. State, 250 Ga. 655, 655, 300 S.E.2d 492 (1983) (“In Wilson v. State, 190 Ga. 824, 829, 10 S.E.2d 861 (1940), we set out the following test for determining causation in homicide cases: ‘Where one inflicts an unlawful injury, such injury is to be accounted as the efficient, proximate cause of death, whenever it shall be made to appear, either that (1) the injury itself constituted the sole proximate cause of the death; or that (2) the injury directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death; or that (3) the injury materially accelerated the death, although proximately occasioned by a pre-existing cause.’).

Consistent with this general rule, we have held in many cases and for many decades that proximate causation is the standard for murder cases prosecuted under the murder statute, now codified as OCGA § 16-5-1. Thus, we have long held, in numerous cases, that proximate causation is the test for malice murder, a crime defined using the identical he ... causes” phrasing. See OCGA § 16-5-1(a) (“A person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being.”).1 Finally, with respect to the statutory text at issue in this case, and in full accord with the general rule for criminal and homicide cases and with our construction of the identical language in subsection (a) of the same statute, we have repeatedly held, before and after Crane, that the phrase he causes” in OCGA § 16-5-1(c) establishes proximate causation as the standard for liability in felony murder cases.2

Indeed, in virtually all of Georgia's many homicide and feticide statutes, including the frequently charged voluntary and involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide statutes, the General Assembly has employed the same or very similar causation phrasing.3 And to the extent those statutes have been interpreted by Georgia's appellate courts, once again the term “cause” has been regularly construed as requiring proximate causation.4

As an original matter, therefore, we would decide this case simply by applying the customary legal meaning of “cause,” which is supported by the ample precedent interpreting the felony murder provision at issue, its identical sister provision in the murder statute, and identical or substantially similar provisions in many other homicide statutes. We would hold that the phrase he causes” as used in OCGA § 16-5-1(c) requires the State to prove that the defendant's conduct in the commission of the underlying felony proximately caused the death of another person. In the context of this case, proximate causation would exist if (to use “the rule” for felony murder that the Court stated a year after deciding Crane ) the felony the defendants committed “directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death,” Durden, 250 Ga. at 329, 297 S.E.2d 237, or if (to use language from a case decided 16 years before Crane ) ‘the homicide [was] committed within the res gestae of the felony’ ... and is one of the incidental, probable consequences of the execution of the design to commit the robbery,” Jones, 220 Ga. at 902, 142 S.E.2d 801 (citations omitted).

Whether the evidence in this case would establish such proximate causation beyond a reasonable doubt is a harder question, in part because the stipulated facts we have before us are summary and the issue of proximate causation is so fact-intensive. That is why proximate cause determinations are generally left to the jury at trial. See McGrath, 277 Ga.App. at 829, 627 S.E.2d 866 (“What constitutes proximate cause is ...

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