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7. The employee's best argument that he is NOT guilty of murder is
An employee worked at a day-care center run by the Happy Faced Day Care Corporation. At the center, one of the young children often arrived with bruises and welts on his back and legs. A statute in the jurisdiction requires all day-care workers to report to the police cases where there is probable cause to suspect child abuse and provides for immediate removal from the home of any suspected child abuse victims. The employee was not aware of this statute. Nevertheless, he did report the child's condition to his supervisor, who advised him to keep quiet about it so the day-care center would not get into trouble for defaming a parent. About two weeks after the employee first noticed the child's condition, the child was beaten to death by his father. The employee has been charged with murder in the death of the child. The evidence at trial disclosed, in addition to the above, that the child had been the victim of beatings by the father for some time, and that these earlier beatings had been responsible for the marks that the employee had seen. The child's mother had been aware of the beatings but had not stopped them because she was herself afraid of the child's father.
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To be guilty of murder, the defendant's actions must have been both the actual («but for») and proximate cause of the victim's death. Proximate cause requires that the death was a reasonably foreseeable result of the defendant's acts.
B is correct. No facts indicate that the employee intended to aid, abet, or facilitate the father in murdering the child. In fact, the employee reported the child's condition to his supervisor, suggesting the opposite. Although the employee followed the advice of his supervisor and did not report the child's condition to the police, thus possibly contributing to a situation in which the father was able to abuse the child, the employee did not do so with the intent required of accomplice liability. Therefore, the employee's best argument is that he lacked the mental state necessary to the commission of the crime.
A is incorrect. Even if the employee did not know about the duty-to-report statute, he still could be held liable as an accomplice if he had aided, abetted, or facilitated the beating, such as by not reporting the suspected child abuse to the authorities, with the intent that the child's father would commit murder. The employee's awareness of the duty-to-report statute is irrelevant to whether he acted as an accomplice to the father's crime.
C is incorrect. A trier of fact could find that the child's death was a reasonably foreseeable result of the employee's failure to report the child's condition to the police, which likely is why the duty-to-report statute exists in the first place. Therefore, this option would not represent the employee's best argument.
D is incorrect. The statute places the burden of reporting suspected child abuse on the employee, not on the employee's corporation. The employee's guilt or innocence under the duty-to-report statute is, at best, incidental to the determination of whether the employee aided, abetted, or facilitated the child's murder with the intent that the murder was committed. If the employee had failed to report the child's condition to the police with the intent that the father would kill the child, then the employee could be guilty of murder as an accomplice, even if the supervisor had told the employee not to contact the police.