People v. Sarun Chun - In Its Latest Battle with Merger Doctrine, Has the California Supreme Court Effectively Merged Second-Degree Felony Murder out of Existence

Abstract

In July of 2009, in the latest salvo in its long struggle to limit California's second-degree felony-murder doctrine, the California Supreme Court announced its decision in People v. Sarun Chun.1 The decision's two holdings at once undercut the doctrine's use in criminal prosecutions and entrench second-degree felony murder in California law. First, after more than forty years of dicta to the contrary, the Court held that second-degree felony-murder doctrine was statutory and not, as was previously understood, judicially created. At the same time, the Court limited the scope of felony murder by interpreting anew its "merger doctrine"-the Court-made exception to felony murder in which certain underlying felonies "merge" with a resulting homicide, 2 precluding a felony-murder charge. Chun, the latest of many changes to merger doctrine since it was first announced in 1969 in People v. Ireland, dramatically reinterprets the way merger functions in second-degree felony-murder prosecutions. Under the new Chun standard, all felonies that contain an "assaultive" element merge per se with the resulting homicide and may no longer serve as the basis of a felonymurder charge. Much like the related "inherently dangerous felony" limitation for felony murder, the Court's new test is intended to create predictability for the practitioner, since judicial determinations of merger will now be based on the face of the statute, and no longer on the particular facts of a defendant's