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2 Hastings J. Crime & Punishment 152 (2021)
California's SB 1437 and Its Applicability to Attempted Murder Liability

handle is hein.journals/hjcrp2 and id is 153 raw text is: Summer 2021 California's SB 1437 and Its Applicability to Attempted Murder Liability VIOLETA ALVAREZ Introduction It is a bedrock principle of the law and of equity that a person should be punished for his or her actions according to his or her own level of individual culpability. With this in mind, it is reasonable to expect a harsher punishment for someone who is the principal in causing a death versus someone else who is not the principal actor. Similarly, one would expect a harsher punishment for completed acts, such as murder, than those that were mere attempts. However, this has not always been the case. Historically, California's felony murder laws permitted an accomplice to be convicted of murder without actually being the person who directly caused death, regardless of whether they shared the intent to harm or kill.2 The bedrock principle that punishment must be meted out according to one's level of individual culpability is at the core of the California Legislature's recent reforms to certain types of murder convictions.3 Under California's Senate Bill 1437 (SB 1437), the felony murder rule and the natural and probable consequences doctrine, as it relates to murder, were amended to ensure that murder liability is not imposed on a person who is not the actual killer, did not act with the intent to kill, or was not a major participant in the underlying felony Cal. S. 1437, 1015 § 1(d) (2018). 2 See Cal. S. 1437, 1015 Legislative Counsel Digest (2018) (this bill would require a principal in a crime to act with malice aforethought to be convicted of murder except when the person was a participant in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of a specified felony in which a death occurred, and the person was the actual killer... this bill would prohibit a participant in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of one of the specified first-degree murder felonies in which a death occurs from being liable for murder, unless the person was the actual killer or the person was not the actual killer...). 3Cal. S. 1437, supra note 1. SB 1437 152

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