3. If charged with murder of the man, the teller should be found

Murder is the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. Malice refers to the mens rea required for a murder conviction. Malice aforethought arises when the defendant commits the unlawful killing with one of the following mental states: intent to kill, intent to inflict great bodily harm or depraved/malignant heart (a killing committed with reckless indifference to an unjustified risk of human life).

Under the implied malice doctrine, a defendant who acts knowingly and recklessly (which includes the intent to commit serious bodily injury and depraved heart intent) can be found to have the requisite mental intent to commit murder. As mentioned above, a murder conviction does not require intent to kill and a guilty conviction can flow from extreme recklessness or reckless indifference to an unjustified risk of human life. Further, in criminal law, the defendant's act must have been the proximate cause of the death of a victim to prove murder. Proximate cause means «legal cause,» or one that the law recognizes as the primary cause of the injury. It is an act that produces foreseeable consequences.

If a defendant intended a harmful result to a particular person or object and, in trying to carry out that intent, caused a similar harmful result to another person or object, his intent will be transferred from the intended person or object to the one actually harmed. (E.g., A shoots B, intending to kill him. Because of bad aim, A's shot hits C, killing him. A is guilty of murdering C because A's intent to kill B will be transferred to C. Note that A may also be guilty of the attempted murder of B.)

A is correct. Here, the teller took actions that ensured the man would walk into a heavily guarded bank with a gun. This is sufficient to show extreme recklessness to an unjustified risk of human life. Further, the teller was the proximate cause of the man's death because the teller knew the man had a violent temper and was very jealous. By falsely telling the man that the man's wife was having an affair with the bank president and saying, «If it were my wife, I'd just march into his office and blow his brains out [,]» the teller was ensuring the man would enter the guarded bank with a gun. Because it was foreseeable that the man would be killed, the teller should be found guilty of murder based on his extreme recklessness.

B is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. Transferred intent does not apply in cases where the actor doing the killing is different than the one who had the intent to kill. In other words, A's intent (the teller's intent to kill the president) will not transfer to B's act of killing (the security guard taking the shot) of C (the man, who died) because A and B (the teller and security guard) are different actors.

C is incorrect. As discussed above, the teller can be found to have acted with implied malice by taking actions that ensured the man would walk into a guarded bank with a gun. It is not necessary that the teller had the intent that the man be killed; it is sufficient that the death of the man was a foreseeable result of the actions the teller put into motion, and that those actions were taken with extreme recklessness.

D is incorrect. The charge does not require that the teller be the one to shoot the man, or that he act in concert with the security guard. As explained above, the teller proximately caused the death of the man and did so with extreme recklessness, and as such, the teller should be found guilty of murder.