## Facts

- Fred W. Hokenson lured store owner Kent Dean back to Dean’s Drug Center in Lewiston, Idaho, by calling about an urgent prescription.
- Hokenson entered through the rear wearing a gas mask and carrying a sack, announced a robbery, and struggled with Dean.
- During the struggle, Hokenson stated he had a bomb; Dean saw cylindrical rods protruding from the sack and pushed it away.
- Hokenson also produced a knife, which Dean ultimately wrested away.
- Police arrived while Dean restrained Hokenson; Officer Ross D. Flavel and others handcuffed Hokenson.
- After being told about the bomb, Officer Flavel approached the device, picked it up, and it exploded, killing him.
- The State prosecuted under a felony-murder theory based on attempted robbery; a jury convicted Hokenson of first-degree murder and the court imposed a life sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether a death caused by an exploding bomb occurs “in the perpetration of” robbery for felony-murder purposes when the robber has been subdued and an officer, without the robber’s direction, handles the bomb.
2. Whether the officer’s act of picking up the bomb was an intervening cause that broke causation for felony-murder liability.
3. Whether applying the felony-murder statute to these circumstances violated due process or improperly extended criminal liability.

## Decision

- The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of conviction for first-degree murder and the life sentence.
- The court held the killing occurred “in the perpetration of” the robbery as part of a continuous transaction closely connected in time, place, and causal sequence to the attempted robbery.
- The court rejected the claim that Officer Flavel’s handling of the bomb was an independent intervening cause, treating it as a foreseeable response to the danger created by bringing a live bomb to the robbery.
- The court upheld the application of Idaho’s felony-murder statute on these facts.

## Legal Principles

- Under Idaho’s felony-murder statute, a killing is first-degree murder if committed “in the perpetration of” an enumerated felony such as robbery, with the malice element supplied by the felonious intent.
- “In the perpetration of” may include a continuous transaction extending beyond immediate control of the dangerous instrumentality when events remain closely connected to the felony.
- Proximate causation for felony-murder may include deaths that are a direct and reasonably foreseeable consequence of the felony, even when a third party’s act is the immediate physical trigger.
- A responder’s efforts to manage a danger created by the felony (such as securing an explosive at the scene) can be treated as foreseeable and not a superseding cause.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Hokenson’s first-degree felony-murder conviction, holding that bringing a functional bomb to commit robbery created a foreseeable risk of death to responding officers and that the fatal explosion occurred within the continuous transaction of the attempted robbery despite the officer’s intervening handling of the device.


State v. Hokenson, 96 Idaho 283, 527 P.2d 487 (Idaho 1974)