Background
Blayton Cota, his half-brother Jerome Schmidt, and a juvenile entered Michael Brown’s detached garage while searching for property to steal. Brown confronted them with a handgun, ordered Cota and Schmidt to their knees, and said police were coming. When Cota ran from the garage, Brown fired toward him. Schmidt then shot Brown multiple times, killing him.
A jury convicted Cota of first-degree felony murder based on burglary, under an accountability theory. The Piatt County circuit court sentenced him to 40 years’ imprisonment. Cota argued on appeal that the burglary had ended before Brown was shot and that Brown’s use of force was an intervening cause.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth District, affirmed. Under the version of Illinois’s felony-murder statute applicable to the 2021 offense, the court applied the proximate-cause theory: a defendant may be liable for a death proximately resulting from a forcible felony, including a killing by someone resisting the crime.
The burglary had not ended because Cota had not reached a place of temporary safety. The burglary, Cota’s attempted escape, Brown’s effort to detain the burglars, and Schmidt’s shooting of Brown were closely connected in time, place, causation, and continuity of action. Brown’s shot at the fleeing Cota was foreseeable resistance to the burglary and escape, not a supervening act disconnected from Cota’s conduct. The evidence therefore supported the jury’s finding that the burglary proximately caused Brown’s death.
Key Takeaways
- For felony-murder purposes, a felony continues through escape until the perpetrators reach a place of temporary safety.
- Under Illinois’s former proximate-cause theory, foreseeable resistance to a forcible felony does not break the causal chain, even if the victim uses force.
- The legality of the victim’s use of force was not determinative; the question was whether the defendants’ conduct set in motion the events leading to the death.
Why It Matters
The decision applies Illinois’s pre-July 2021 felony-murder framework to an escape-related killing. It underscores that a defendant need not personally fire the fatal shots to face felony-murder liability when an accomplice kills during a still-uncompleted escape from a forcible felony.