Massachusetts SJC Reforms Felony-Murder Rule, Emphasizing Intent Over Automatic Life Sentences in Commonwealth v. Brown

September 20, 2017.

In Commonwealth v. Brown, 477 Mass. 805 (2017), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the felony-murder rule requires a finding of actual malice, not merely constructive malice, and that felony-murder will no longer serve as an independent theory of liability for murder but rather as an aggravating element under G. L. c. 265, § 1. The court applied its authority under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the defendant’s convictions from first-degree to second-degree murder, finding this adjustment more consonant with justice given the defendant’s limited role in the underlying crimes.

Our Take:

Where Massachusetts common law has created a system that allows for first degree murder convictions that are ‘not consonant with justice,’ the system must give way.  In the Brown opinion, the Court corrects a two-hundred-year-old anomaly in our Commonwealth’s jurisprudence.  

In his concurring opinion, Justice Gaziano argues that this new approach ‘diminishes the seriousness of violent felonies that result in the deaths of innocent victims.’ However, the majority’s decision only eliminates the common law necessity for a life sentence in cases where a victim is killed during the commission of a life felony.  Every felony triggering the common-law rule carried with it the opportunity for a life-long sentence.  Thus, the true effect of the Court’s decision was to appropriately restore sentencing discretion to the judge. In all cases in which felony murder would previously have automatically imposed a life-long sentence, a judge maintains the authority to impose a life sentence should the circumstances deem it appropriate. 

Justice Gaziano’s concurring opinion overstates the effect that this ruling will have on the vast majority of felony cases resulting in deaths.  Historically, most cases in which felony murder could have sustained a murder conviction would have also supported the same finding, because one of the three prongs of malice was otherwise evident.  Pursuant to c. 265 s. 1, which remains intact under Brown, the statute elevates these offenses to first degree murder without resorting to the common law felony murder rule. Consequently it is only in that case found in “the remote outer fringes” – like the killing that the co-felon never signed up for – that is implicated by the Court’s ruling. And rightly so.  

By allowing the statute to operate as written and narrowing the scope of felony murder case law, the Court has effectively chipped away at a dubious legal principle. The Brown decision eliminates the illogical result laid out on page ten of the majority’s concurring opinion, in which a defendant may be guilty of first degree murder should their accomplice accidentally shoot and kill a victim during a robbery, but would not be guilty of any violent crime should their accomplish shoot to kill, but happen to miss.

Justice can best be found when we measure a person’s intent, rather than blindly resorting to the operation of an anomalous legal presumption of questionable provenance. At the end of the day, we reap what we sow.  The Massachusetts Court has long recognized this in virtually all other contexts, and I’m glad that the Court has updated the felony murder rule to comport with our maturing and higher standards of justice.