Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
State v. Maldonado, 241 N.C. App. 370 (Jun. 2, 2015)
In this first-degree murder case, the court rejected the defendant’s argument that there was an insufficient relationship between the felony supporting felony-murder (discharging a firearm into occupied property) and the death. The law requires only that the death occur “in the perpetration or attempted perpetration” of a predicate felony; there need not be a causal “causal relationship”’ between the felony and the homicide. All that is required is that the events occur during a single transaction. Here, the defendant stopped shooting into the house after forcing his way through the front door; he then continued shooting inside. The defendant argued that once he was inside the victim attempted to take his gun and that this constituted a break in the chain of events that led to her death. Even if this version of the facts were true, the victim did not break the chain of events by defending herself inside her home after the defendant continued his assault indoors.