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State v. Doyle11/18/2003
approximately 4:00 p.m., defendant robbed Cocke at knife point, stole her vehicle, rammed Burn's car to aid in his escape, and drove at a high speed out of the parking lot toward the Interstate. At approximately 4:13 p.m., Officer Hawkins received a radio dispatch about an armed robbery of a Ford Expedition from WalMart's parking lot. Officer Hawkins spotted defendant driving the stolen Ford Expedition at the posted speed limit at approximately 4:22 p.m. The State contends that defendant was driving the speed limit on the Interstate in order to blend in and avoid attention. The State argues that defendant had not slowed down because he had reached a safe haven. Defendant admitted that he knew he could not out run the police and decided to drive the speed limit to escape toward the Tennessee state line, hoping not to attract attention to himself. Defendant maintained his course of action even when Officer Hawkins pulled in behind him. Once other officers joined Officer Hawkins and activated their lights and sirens, defendant accelerated, leading police on a high speed chase that ended in the victim's death.
Presuming, as defendant argues, that he was initially obeying all traffic laws on the Interstate, defendant was still fleeing to escape from and to avoid arrest for armed robbery. Escape need not be accomplished at high speeds but can be accomplished by driving at or below the speed limit. Approximately ten minutes had elapsed between the time the "be on the lookout" call about the armed robbery was dispatched, until the time Officer Hawkins spotted defendant driving the stolen Ford Expedition. Approximately thirty minutes elapsed between the time of the armed robbery and the collision which killed the passenger in the Saturn.
Defendant presented no evidence that he was diverted or stopped from his chosen route from the site of the robbery to the Tennessee border prior to the collision. The State presented sufficient evidence to show "no break in the chain of events between the taking of the victim's property and the force causing the victim's death, so that the taking and the homicide are part of the same series of events, forming one continuous transaction." Braxton, 344 N.C. at 713, 477 S.E.2d at 178. Defendant's assignment of error is overruled.
IV. Jury Instruction on Insulating Acts of Negligence
Defendant contends that the trial court erred by denying defendant's requested special instruction to the jury on insulating acts of negligence. We disagree.
Defendant submitted to the trial court the following written request:
Second, that while committing robbery with a dangerous weapon, the defendant killed the victim. A killing is committed in the perpetration of a felony for purposes of the felony murder rule where there is no break in the chain of events leading from the initial felony to the act causing death, so that the killing is part of a series of incidents which form one continuous transaction; however[,] the conduct of another person may result in a break in this chain of events.
And Third, that the defendant's act was a proximate cause of the victim's death. A proximate cause is a real cause, a cause without which the victim's death would not have occurred. The defendant's act need not to have been the only cause, nor the last or nearest cause. It is sufficient if it concurred with some other cause acting at the time which, in combination with it, caused the death of the victim.
However, a natural and continuous sequence of causation may be interrupted or broken by the conduct of a second person. This occurs when a second person's conduct was not reasonably foreseeable by the defendant and causes i
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