by David Kim

The Supreme Court of California held that Penal Code § 189, subdivision (e)(2) requires a nonkiller participant in a qualifying felony to have aided or abetted the actual killer in the lethal act itself. Proof of aiding the underlying felony alone is insufficient to sustain felony-murder liability under this provision. In resolving a conflict among the Courts of Appeal, the Court disapproved People v. Taito, 115 Cal. App. 5th 694 (2025), People v. Lopez, 104 Cal. App. 5th 616 (2024), and People v. Lopez, 88 Cal. App. 5th 566 (2023), each of which had held that aiding the underlying felony satisfied subdivision (e)(2). The Court reversed the judgment below and remanded for reconsideration.

Background

On January 1, 1987, two armed men attacked the victim Stockwell and his girlfriend S.F. inside Stockwell’s condominium, handcuffing Stockwell, robbing the couple, and raping S.F. After the assailants fled, S.F. discovered Stockwell had been shot. DNA evidence later linked Richard Morris, Jr. to the sexual assault. In 2013, a jury convicted Morris of first degree murder with special-circumstance findings for rape, robbery, and murder for financial gain. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus five years. The record did not establish whether Morris or his codefendant fired the fatal shot, though the parties agree the jury necessarily found Morris acted with intent to kill.

Following enactment of Senate Bill 1437 in 2018, which the Legislature adopted “to more equitably sentence offenders in accordance with their involvement in homicides,” the felony-murder rule was significantly narrowed. The amended § 189, subdivision (e) now limits felony-murder liability to three categories: (1) actual killers, (2) nonkillers who acted with intent to kill and aided the actual killer “in the commission of murder in the first degree,” and (3) major participants who acted with reckless indifference to human life.

Morris filed a resentencing petition under § 1172.6 in 2022. The trial court denied relief at the prima facie stage. A divided Court of Appeal affirmed, with the majority concluding that aiding the underlying felony satisfied subdivision (e)(2). The Courts of Appeal were split on this question. People v. Jackson, 110 Cal. App. 5th 128 (2025), and People v. Kelly, 105 Cal. App. 5th 162 (2024), required proof of aiding the lethal act, while the decision below and the Lopez decisions reached the opposite conclusion.

Analysis

The Court reviewed this question of statutory interpretation de novo and began its analysis with the text of subdivision (e)(2), which applies to a person who “was not the actual killer, but, with the intent to kill, aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, solicited, requested, or assisted the actual killer in the commission of murder in the first degree.” The Court found this language to be “plain and unambiguous.” See People v. Prudholme, 531 P.3d 341 (Cal. 2023). A person becomes “the actual killer” only by directly causing a death and to aid that individual therefore means to aid the very act that confers that designation, the Court reasoned. The “most natural reading” of the provision requires aiding the lethal act rather than aiding someone who happens to later commit a killing with some other felonious act, according to the Court.

The Court explained that the statute’s internal architecture reinforced this conclusion. Subdivision (e)(3) expressly references the “underlying felony,” while subdivision (e)(2) does not. Applying the established canon that “[w]hen the Legislature uses materially different language in statutory provisions addressing the same subject or related subjects, the normal inference is that the Legislature intended a difference in meaning,” the Court treated this omission as deliberate. Kelly. The preamble of subdivision (e) already requires participation in a qualifying felony. Reading subdivision (e)(2) to also require only participation in the underlying felony would strip an entire clause of independent meaning, the Court reasoned.

The Court found additional support in People v. Fayed, 460 P.3d 1149 (Cal. 2020), where the California Supreme Court had previously construed the phrase “in the commission of murder in the first degree” in the financial-gain special circumstance under § 190.2, subdivision (c), as requiring assistance with the deliberate killing itself. The Court treated Fayed as consistent with its present reading of § 189, subdivision (e)(2).

The Attorney General’s Reliance
on Dickey Is Misplaced

The Attorney General urged the Court to utilize the interpretation from People v. Dickey, 111 P.3d 921 (Cal. 2005), where the California Supreme Court had construed substantially similar language in § 190.2, former subdivision (b), to require only aiding the underlying felony. The Court rejected this argument. Dickey rested on the foundational premise that “[a]ll persons aiding or abetting the commission of burglary or robbery are guilty of first degree murder when one of them kills while acting in furtherance of the common design.” However, the Court noted that Senate Bill 1437 abrogated that very principle.

Because it is “no longer true” that all felony participants are automatically guilty of murder when a co-participant kills, the Court explained that allowing Dickey’s reasoning to control would be “circular and inconsistent with the very purpose of Senate Bill 1437’s changes to the felony-murder rule.” The Court observed that the question presented by the amended statute is precisely which individuals remain liable for first degree murder, and the now-outdated legal backdrop informing Dickey cannot supply the answer.

Based on the fact the Court concluded that the statutory language was clear, it stated that resort to legislative history was unnecessary. Prudholme. Nevertheless, the Court examined the record and found nothing favoring the Attorney General’s position. While the Attorney General argued that the legislative findings focused on barring the imputation of malice, the Court observed that the Legislature’s stated objectives addressed both mens rea and actus reus.

The legislative findings declared that “a person should be punished for his or her actions according to his or her own level of individual culpability” and that culpability for murder “must be premised upon that person’s own actions and subjective mens rea.” Committee analyses similarly confirmed the bill sought to refocus on “the intent and actions of the participants,” with the Legislature “reserving the harshest punishments for those who intentionally planned or actually committed the killing.”

Morris’ Interpretation Does Not Produce Illogical Results

The Attorney General contended that requiring both a heightened mens rea and heightened actus reus under subdivision (e)(2), relative to subdivision (e)(3), would be illogical, arguing the statute creates an inversely proportional relationship between actus reus and mens rea. The Court disagreed, concluding the Legislature may simply have intended to establish “different paths to liability” calibrated to individual culpability depending on the circumstances, rather than “a perfect, inverse sliding scale of actus reus and mens rea culpability.” Referencing Kelly, the Court explained that a person who provides minor assistance to a qualifying felony while secretly hoping it results in death could be less culpable than a major participant who demonstrated reckless indifference to human life under subdivision (e)(3).

The Court also rejected the claim that its reading rendered subdivision (e)(2) duplicative of either subdivision (e)(3) or standard direct aiding and abetting. Subdivision (e)(3) requires personal involvement “substantial, greater than the actions of an ordinary aider and abettor,” per People v. Banks, 351 P.3d 330 (Cal. 2015). In contrast, direct aiding and abetting murder requires knowledge “of the direct perpetrator’s unlawful intent,” see People v. Curiel, 538 P.3d 993 (Cal. 2023), whereas subdivision (e)(2) requires only the defendant’s own intent to kill, the Court explained. These distinct requirements preserve each theory’s independent function.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the Court reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded for reconsideration. On remand, the Court instructed that the Court of Appeal may address the Attorney General’s remaining arguments regarding whether Morris has made the prima facie showing required for an evidentiary hearing under § 1172.6. See: People v. Morris, 2026 Cal. LEXIS 2322 (2026).

Editor’s Note: Chief Justice Guerrero concurred in the judgment but rejected the majority’s view that § 189(e)(2) is plain and unambiguous. In her view, the competing interpretations were in “relative equipoise,” so the rule of lenity supplied the basis for adopting the defendant-favorable reading. Her separate opinion means that while six justices agreed on the result, only five endorsed the majority’s conclusion that the statute’s meaning was plain.  

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