## Facts

- Eddie Matos and two accomplices forcibly entered a McDonald’s in Manhattan by shattering a glass door with a sledgehammer.
- Inside, the group held employees at gunpoint during an armed burglary and attempted robbery.
- A maintenance worker escaped and returned with police officers.
- As officers approached, they saw Matos run toward the back; inside, they observed him climb a ladder leading to the roof.
- Officer Dwyer climbed the ladder in pursuit; shortly thereafter he was found about 25 feet down an airshaft.
- After rescue efforts, Officer Dwyer was pronounced dead at a hospital.
- Matos was convicted of second-degree felony murder, second-degree burglary, and attempted robbery based on the officer’s death during immediate flight from the felonies.

## Issues

1. Whether, for purposes of New York’s felony-murder statute, a fleeing felon “causes” a death when a pursuing police officer fatally falls during immediate flight from the felony.
2. Whether the causal connection requires the defendant to commit the final physical act producing death, or instead requires only that the defendant’s conduct actually contributes to and is a sufficiently direct cause of the death.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
- The court held Matos’s armed felony and roof escape set in motion events that actually contributed to Officer Dwyer’s death.
- The court further held the officer’s fatal fall during pursuit was a sufficiently direct, reasonably foreseeable result of Matos’s conduct in immediate flight.
- The court rejected any requirement that the defendant personally perform the final, fatal act.

## Legal Principles

- Felony murder under N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25(3) applies when, in the course of an enumerated felony or immediate flight from it, a participant causes the death of a non-participant.
- Criminal causation requires that the defendant’s conduct be an actual contributory cause of death by setting in motion the events leading to the fatality; the conduct need not be the sole cause.
- Legal (proximate) causation is satisfied when the defendant’s conduct is a sufficiently direct cause of death, meaning the ultimate harm should have been reasonably foreseeable.
- A defendant may “cause” death for felony-murder purposes without committing the final physical act that immediately produces the fatal injury, so long as the causal chain is not too attenuated.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Matos’s felony-murder conviction, ruling that an armed felon’s immediate flight can satisfy felony-murder causation when it sets in motion a reasonably foreseeable pursuit culminating in a pursuing officer’s accidental death, even though the felon did not inflict the fatal injury directly.


People v. Matos, 83 N.Y.2d 509 (N.Y. 1994)