I Hope It Was Good Beer, at Least

Today's Charleston Gazette has a story about a beer heist gone wrong. Seems the brew thief ran into a local 7-11, grabbed a case, ran back outside, and hopped into the bed of a waiting pickup truck. Unfortunately, as the pickup was making its speedy getaway, the beer thief fell out of the bed, cracking his head on the pavement. He died.

Aside from the obvious - that this screams out for a Darwin Award nomination - it prompted in me an interesting legal question. There is a legal doctrine called the felony-murder rule that holds that any death that results during the commission of another felony is murder, usually first degree. Doesn't matter if there was no intent to kill or if it was completely accidental, it's still murder. It usually works like this - punk walks into a convenience store, sticks up the cashier (armed robbery - the felony), and when the cash isn't forthcoming (or it's not enough) the punk shoots the cashier (the murder). Make sense? In most cases the felony-murder rule makes it easier for the state to get a big juicy first-degree murder conviction because it doesn't have to worry about proving things like intent and malice.

Now, usually, the dead person at the end of all this is an innocent victim - the cashier, the homeowner who suffered a burglary, etc. But some states allow application of the felony-murder rule whenever someone dies - even one of the perpetrators. Which makes me wonder: does the driver of the pickup face a felony-murder charge in West Virginia? Probably not, because I doubt that the beer stolen was worth enough to constitute a felony. But assuming the beer theft was a felony, should the driver face 15 years to life in the state pen?

Something to ponder.