## Facts

- Christopher Dixon and Sherman Lightfoot planned and carried out an aggravated robbery of a Dayton, Ohio business.
- Dixon and Lightfoot entered wearing masks and latex gloves.
- Inside, Dixon restrained an employee while Lightfoot pointed a gun at the employee’s face and demanded money.
- The employee told them the money was in an office that required a key held by the manager.
- Dixon and Lightfoot took the employee to the office and had him summon the manager.
- When the manager arrived, he struggled with Lightfoot for the gun; the gun discharged during the struggle.
- The manager gained control of the gun, and Dixon and Lightfoot ran from the building.
- As they fled, the manager fired toward them. Dixon escaped; Lightfoot was shot in the head and died.
- Dixon was indicted and convicted by a jury of aggravated robbery and felony murder under Ohio’s felony-murder provision, based on Lightfoot’s death occurring as a result of the robbery.
- Dixon appealed, challenging the felony-murder conviction on constitutional and causation grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether Ohio’s felony-murder statute violates equal protection because it may apply to conduct also chargeable as involuntary manslaughter but carries a harsher penalty.
2. Whether felony-murder liability may attach when the person who dies is a co-felon shot by the intended victim during resistance to the underlying felony.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Second Appellate District, affirmed Dixon’s convictions.
- The court rejected Dixon’s equal-protection challenge to the felony-murder statute despite potential overlap with involuntary manslaughter.
- The court held that the evidence supported felony-murder liability because Lightfoot’s death was a proximate result of the aggravated robbery, even though the fatal shot was fired by the robbery victim.

## Legal Principles

- Statutory overlap between criminal offenses does not alone violate equal protection; the legislature may define different crimes with different penalties, and prosecutorial charging choices are not unconstitutional on that basis without more.
- Under Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.02(B), felony murder requires that the defendant “cause the death of another as a proximate result of” committing or attempting to commit a qualifying predicate offense; proximate result turns on foreseeability and causal connection.
- A death may be a proximate result of an armed robbery when it follows from a victim’s predictable defensive response to the robbery; defensive resistance is not automatically an intervening cause that cuts off liability.
- The felony-murder provision is not limited to deaths directly inflicted by the defendant or an accomplice; it can apply when a third party causes the fatal injury during the events set in motion by the predicate felony.
- The statutory phrase “death of another” can include the death of a co-felon when the death is proximately caused by the defendant’s commission or attempted commission of the predicate offense.

## Conclusion

The appellate court affirmed Dixon’s felony-murder conviction, holding that Ohio’s felony-murder statute did not violate equal protection merely because it overlaps with involuntary manslaughter and that the victim’s shooting of Dixon’s accomplice during the robbery was a foreseeable, proximate result of the aggravated robbery.


State v. Dixon, 2002 Ohio App. LEXIS 472 (2002)