People v. Wilkins

Wilkins (defendant) worked for a couple of days at a home-construction site. Around the time that Wilkins worked at the site, there was a large delivery of kitchen appliances, lighting fixtures, ceiling fans, and other materials. Wilkins went to the site overnight to steal the materials. He filled the back of his pickup truck with the appliances, including a stove, and filled the interior of the cab of the truck above the windows with other items. Wilkins failed to tie down any of the large boxes in the back of the truck, even though there were ties in the truck for this purpose, and he left the tailgate down. Wilkins then proceeded to drive away with the stolen materials. About 60 miles away on a highway, the stove fell out of the back of Wilkins’s truck as he was driving. The stove landed in the middle of the highway and caused chaos among the cars around it. One driver, David Piquette, swerved to avoid hitting the stove and crashed into a tractor trailer that was towing two trailers. Piquette’s car became pinned between the two trailers, and he was killed. Wilkins was convicted of first-degree murder under the felony-murder rule based upon the burglary. Wilkins appealed, alleging that the death was not part of the same continuous transaction as the burglary, because he had reached a place of temporary safety before the death occurred.