CRIMES--ACTS DONE IN COMMISION OF FELONY-COMMON DESIGN

Authors

Abstract

A group of rioting convicts freed the defendants from their cells in Auburn Prison. The defendants joined in a demand on the prison authorities for liberty to leave the prison safely, and in a threat, in case of resistance to their efforts and demands, to kill the warden and seven guards, who had been captured and disarmed and were held as hostages. The prison authorities adopted a ruse. They permitted the convicts to go into the guard room with the captured personnel, where gas bombs were then discharged. Six to a score of shots were fired, all coming, according to the weight of the evidence, from the guns of the convicts within the room. One of these shots, intended undoubtedly for one of the captured guards, killed a convict, a member of the rioting group. Held, that where a conspirator in attempting to escape imprisonment was killed by a fellow conspirator, the co-conspirators were guilty of murder in the first degree. People v. Udwin, 254 N. Y. 255, 172 N.E. 48g.

Recommended Citation

CRIMES--ACTS DONE IN COMMISION OF FELONY-COMMON DESIGN, 29 Mich. L. Rev. 371 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol29/iss3/18