The Appeal - Missouri Felony Murder Law Traps Self-Defense Pleas

Despite efforts elsewhere in the United States to weaken and eliminate the felony murder doctrine, Missouri is one of the few states where any felony, no matter the seriousness, can be the basis for a felony murder charge. Guyora Binder, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who has written a book on felony murder, said Missouri is one of the easiest states for prosecutors to convict someone of felony murder.

In Missouri, prosecutors can charge and convict any person of second degree murder without having to prove that they intended to cause another person’s death. Prosecutors must only prove that a person or an accomplice committed another specified felony and that a death occurred “in the perpetration or the attempted perpetration of such felony or in the flight from the perpetration or attempted perpetration of such felony.” Prosecutors can convict someone of murder even when the death was caused by a third non-party (i.e. neither the person nor their accomplice). There is no possibility in Missouri for a person charged with felony murder to raise an affirmative defense, (for example, that he or she acted under duress, that they weren’t armed and had no reason to believe another participant was armed or intended to engage in conduct likely to result in death).

An investigation by The Appeal and the Yale Investigative Reporting Lab reveals how prosecutors use the state’s felony murder statute to imprison people who say they acted in self-defense. 

Excerpts from their collaborative report are shared below.

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Eight months later, in July 2022, Antonio Meanus sat in the correctional center in Cameron, Missouri. Dalton Minnick, his best friend, was visiting him. The Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office had charged Meanus with second-degree felony murder and unlawful possession of a firearm. The state’s final plea offer was 12 years in prison. If Meanus risked a trial and lost, the sentence could soar to 30 years—or life.

Meanus said he wasn’t worried. He knew he’d acted in self-defense. For months, Meanus said, he believed a jury would see it, too. Minnick agreed.

But then Greene County public defender Christopher Hatley, who had been assigned to Meanus’ case, sat Meanus down and gave him the worst news he said he’d ever received.

Even though Meanus had believed he would die that afternoon if he didn’t shoot, Hatley said his self-defense claim didn’t matter. Instead, he’d be tried under Missouri’s controversial felony-murder law, which allows prosecutors to charge people with murder if, while they are committing a felony such as a robbery or assault, someone dies or is killed by a third party.

The terms of the law ensured that Meanus was as good as convicted.

Missouri is one of only four states where there are no limits on which felonies can trigger a felony-murder charge, and, once prosecutors invoke the law, defendants can no longer claim they acted in self-defense. Meanus had previous felonies related to drug charges and a robbery connected to a bar fight—so he was committing a felony by illegally possessing a gun. In the eyes of the law, the rest of what happened the day of Dunham’s death no longer mattered.

Meanus is not alone. There are at least 10 men in the state of Missouri who are serving sentences for felony murder in cases where they maintain that they killed someone in self-defense, according to a three-month investigation by The Appeal and the Yale Investigative Reporting Lab. The Appeal also spoke to 10 public defenders across the state. Eight said they either had such a case in their district or knew of one nearby.

Josh Lohn, a public defender working in St. Louis, told The Appeal that he first became frustrated with the felony-murder law when he was assigned to defend a 49-year-old named Robert Smith who, like Meanus, had killed someone in a situation where he thought he was going to die.

But the prosecution found a way around Smith’s self-defense claim—by filing a felony-murder charge. The Missouri Supreme Court has at least three times issued rulings saying self-defense has no bearing in felony-murder cases, because, per the statute, all that must be proven is the underlying felony.

“[The prosecutor] admitted to the judge, on the record, that the reason he did that was because he knew that you could not use self-defense as a defense to felony murder,” Lohn said in an interview with The Appeal, during which he spoke for nearly an hour, interrupted only by his own increasingly agitated sighs. “It’s a disgusting misuse of the law.”

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You can read the full article, "How Missouri's Felony Murder Law Traps People for Defending Themselves" at The Appeal. The Appeal is a nonprofit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety, exposing the harms of a criminal legal system entrenched in centuries of systemic racism. The Yale Investigative Reporting Lab aims to enhance the power of collaborative public-interest journalism, and is rooted in the idea that accountability-centered reporting is critical to a thriving democracy.