Slate's explainer tackles the seemingly absurd question of whether the felon involved in the PHX car chase can be liable for the deaths of the news chopper crews that died while filming the action. He makes it sound like there is a chance of liability here, comparing it to possible traffic deaths during a chase.
Felony murder is a legal concept that converts any inadvertent killing during the course of a felony into murder. Rob a store with a gun and you are liable for the death of a customer even if she dies when you drop the gun by mistake and it goes off. So far so good. The woman, like the traffic deaths in a car chase, was an unwitting bystander and her death should be considered murder.
The analogy fails when you get to people who chase down the danger. These people are assuming the risk of their actions. Where that risk is taken to stop the attacker or help save someone else, I think killing the actor is still murder. (i.e. I jump into the store to stop the guy -- he kills me, that's murder). We want to encourage people to do that.
But where the people hurt are the media, just there to record the event? That's, well, nothing. They aren't serving any higher penal purpose by reporting the accident. If anything, there is evidence that celebrity (the chance to be on TV) is what creates car chases in the first place. Regardless -- the incentive here is to clear people out of the area. If you rush to the scene of the crime just to watch, knowing the risk of your actions, I don't know that we can blame the felon when you get hurt.
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