## Facts

- An undercover police officer arranged to buy drugs from Cody Dekens at a residence in Kankakee, Illinois.
- Before the meeting, Dekens and his associate, Peter Pecchenino, planned to rob the officer.
- During the encounter, Dekens pointed a shotgun at the officer and threatened him.
- The officer fired multiple shots at Dekens.
- As the officer was leaving, Pecchenino grabbed the officer; the officer shot Pecchenino, who later died.
- The State charged Dekens with first-degree murder under the felony-murder provision, 720 ILCS 5/9-1(a)(3), based on Pecchenino’s death during the attempted robbery.

## Issues

1. Whether Illinois’s felony-murder statute permits charging a felon with first-degree murder when the person killed is a co-felon and the fatal act is committed by the intended victim of the felony.
2. Whether felony-murder liability in Illinois depends on an “agency” limitation (killing by the felon or accomplice) or instead on proximate causation and foreseeability.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of the felony-murder count and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that Illinois applies a proximate-cause theory of felony murder.
- Under that theory, a defendant may be charged with felony murder when a co-felon is killed by the intended victim of the felony, so long as the death is a foreseeable consequence of the felony.
- The court rejected the view that felony-murder liability is limited to deaths of “innocent victims.”
- The court disapproved reliance on a requirement that the fatal act be “in furtherance of the common design” when that limitation is not found in the statutory text.

## Legal Principles

- Illinois felony-murder liability is governed by proximate causation: a felon is responsible for a death proximately resulting from the commission of an enumerated felony, even if the fatal act is committed by a third person resisting the felony.
- Felony-murder liability is not categorically restricted by the status of the decedent; it may extend to the death of a co-felon if the death is a foreseeable result of the felonious conduct.
- Foreseeable lethal resistance by victims or others attempting to prevent a violent felony can satisfy the causal connection required for felony murder under Illinois law.
- Statutory interpretation controls: limitations based on who fired the shot or whether the killing advanced the felons’ plan cannot override the statute’s focus on a death occurring “in the course of” the felony and proximately caused by it.

## Conclusion

The court held that a felon may face felony-murder charges for a co-felon’s death caused by the intended victim’s defensive force, when that death is a foreseeable consequence of committing the felony, and it reinstated the murder charge for further proceedings.


People v. Dekens, 695 N.E.2d 474 (Ill. 1998)