Here is a guest blog from Mark Cabaniss, an attorney who has worked as both a prosecutor and as a public defender. Mark has written several interesting pieces on the Kelly Thomas case over at GreaterLongBeach.com.
Reportedly, the Orange County DA is waiting for the coroner’s report before deciding whether to file charges against the six Fullerton police in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. As the medical evidence comes in, it looks increasingly likely that charges will be filed. But will the charges, if they are brought, be minimal, or will they be serious? Will they be the most serious charges warranted by the evidence? We don’t know. What we do know is that Kelly Thomas died after six Fullerton police severely beat him. The DA is still waiting for the official cause of death to be determined, but for the sake of this article, I am going to assume that the death came about as a result of the beating. Now let us make two further assumptions: First, that the police were committing a crime during the beating leading to the death, and second, that the death was unintentional, i.e., an unplanned consequence of the beating. If that is what happened, that the police illegally beat Kelly Thomas and he subsequently died as a result of that beating, then there are two ways to charge the case under California law, depending on whether the police were committing a misdemeanor, such as simple battery, or a felony, such as kidnapping or torture. If the underlying crime was a misdemeanor, then the case would properly be charged as involuntary manslaughter. But if the underlying crime was a felony, then the case would properly be charged as felony murder.
The difference is simple. Suppose you get in a bar fight and get your arms around a guy, trying to throw him down. He stumbles out of your grasp, but, unfortunately for you, (and him,) he trips and falls, smacking his head on something hard, killing him. This would be a textbook case of involuntary manslaughter, because the death was an unintended consequence of your misdemeanor, i.e., simple battery. Now consider the same hypothetical, only this time you grab the guy not in a bar fight, but in a kidnapping. Again, he trips, falls, and dies. Now this is a case of felony murder, since the death resulted from your felony, i.e., kidnapping.
