## Facts

- Thomas McKeiver entered a Newark tavern around 1:30 a.m. with his face partially covered and fired a shot into the ceiling.
- He ordered the bartender and four patrons to the end of the bar, demanded wallets, opened the cash register, and took about $90.
- McKeiver collected the wallets and ordered the victims to walk toward the front door.
- During the episode, patron Julia Yuhas toppled to the floor; McKeiver then fled the tavern.
- Yuhas was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
- The medical examiner concluded death resulted from cardiac arrest caused by fright during the hold-up, acting on preexisting occlusive arteriosclerotic coronary artery disease.
- The State indicted McKeiver for murder under a first-degree felony-murder theory based on robbery.

## Issues

1. Whether a felony-murder indictment is legally sufficient when the victim dies from fright-induced heart failure during an armed robbery, without any physical contact by the defendant.
2. Whether death by fear and stress during the commission of robbery can be treated as proximately caused by the felony for felony-murder purposes.

## Decision

- The court denied McKeiver’s pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment.
- The court held the indictment sufficiently alleged that the armed robbery set in motion events that could be found to have proximately caused Yuhas’s death.
- The absence of physical contact did not, as a matter of law, bar felony-murder liability where the robbery’s terror could foreseeably trigger a fatal physiological reaction.

## Legal Principles

- A felony-murder charge may proceed when a death occurs during the commission of robbery and the felonious conduct is a proximate cause of death, even if the death results from fright rather than physical injury.
- Physical contact between the defendant and the decedent is not required if the defendant’s conduct foreseeably creates fear and stress that leads to death.
- A victim’s preexisting medical condition does not break causation when the felony precipitates death; the actor remains responsible absent an independent intervening cause.
- On a pretrial motion to dismiss an indictment, the court assumes the alleged facts as true and asks only whether those facts, if proved, would constitute the charged offense.

## Conclusion

The court permitted the felony-murder prosecution to proceed, holding that an armed robbery can proximately cause a fright-induced fatal heart attack and that neither lack of physical contact nor the victim’s coronary disease defeats the legal sufficiency of the indictment at the pleading stage.


State v. McKeiver, 213 A.2d 320 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. 1965)