The Owner Shot First

The Defendant and an accomplice, Ball, set out to rob a gasoline station. Ball walked into the station office holding a revolver. The station operator, Carpenter, was armed; when Ball confronted him, Carpenter drew his own gun and fired first, shooting Ball dead on the spot. Carpenter then fired at the Defendant, wounding him as he fled with money from the till. Ball — the Defendant’s own accomplice — was thus killed not by the Defendant and not by any of the robbers, but by the victim of the robbery acting in self-defence. The State charged the Defendant with first-degree robbery and, for the death of Ball, with first-degree murder on a felony-murder theory, arguing that a death during an armed robbery makes the surviving robber a murderer. The Defendant was convicted of both. The question was whether the felony-murder rule makes a robber guilty of murder for the death of his own accomplice when that death was caused by the intended victim shooting back, rather than by any act of the felons themselves.