Right, in most places the law is that if anyone is shot during an armed robbery, it's on the robbers, not anyone else. That's because the law reasons that the decision to engage in a crime where it's highly likely that someone will be seriously injured or killed is the cause of all reactions to said crime (because such reaction is predictable), including return fire from intended victims. If return fire injures an innocent third party, it's felony murder on the part of the armed robbers. The defender isn't charged with anything. The same rule should apply with any charge, to include reckless endangerment.
You make an excellent observation, which is mostly correct. The only two things which are incorrect are:
First, though maybe it should, the rule of felony murder simply does not apply to “any other charge.”
Second, is including “not anyone else” at the end of your first sentence. While the rule of felony murder certainly does make all co-perpetrators criminally liable for any foreseeable death resulting from the commission of the felony, it does not relieve a non-perpetrator shooter from separate criminal liability for any single shot fired with criminal negligence.
So, changing the facts in the original story just a bit, had any of the shots fired by our resident, shooting in the general direction of the felons, but at no one in particular and while his eyes were closed, struck and killed a neighbor, the fleeing felons would be criminally liable for second degree murder in that killing under the rule of felony murder. However the resident would also be criminally liable for involuntary manslaughter in that killing, because it directly resulted from his criminal negligence.
Bet reading that’ll make some here extremely unhappy. But, that’s just the way it is. Criminally negligent conduct unfortunately has legal consequences, and there’s no free pass simply because the criminally negligent act was committed in an attempt to foil a felony.
Remember that none of this addresses all of the potential felony charges which could be brought against the fleeing thieves for what they did.
