*521OPINION

DIETZEN, Justice.

Appellant Timothy John Huber (Huber) was found guilty by a Kandiyohi County jury of intentionally aiding another in the commission of second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder arising out of the death of Timothy Larson on October 8, 2011.' A divided court of appeals panel affirmed, concluding that the accomplice-liability instructions given to the jury were plainly erroneous, but that the error did not affect Huber’s substantial rights. We reverse and remand for a new trial on- the ground that the accomplice-liability jury instructions were plainly erroneous and affected Huber’s substantial rights, and that a new trial is required to protect the fairness, integrity,' and public reputation of the judicial proceedings.

This case is the product of a long-standing animosity between Huber and Timothy Larson (Larson). Larson and his father, N.L., owned adjoining farmland in rural Kandiyohi County. Delbert Huber (Delbert), who was 80 years old at the time'of the homicide, is Huber’s father.- Delbert resided'On and farmed land hear the Lar-sons’ farmland. Larson and his wife lived in Albertville.

On the evening of October 8, 2011, Delbert called 911 and reported that he had shot Larson earlier that same day. After the police investigation, Huber was indicted for first-degree premeditated murder, in violation of Minn.Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2014); second-degree intentional murder, in violation of Minn.Stat. § 609.19, subd. 1(1) (2014); and second-degree felony murder, in violation of Minn.Stat. § 609.19, subd. 2(1) (2014); Each of these offenses was charged on an accomplice-liability theory. Delbert was also charged with respect to Larson’s death;- he pleaded guilty and was convicted of second-degree murder.

At' Huber’s trial, the State presented testimony that Huber and Larson had known each other for many years, and that their relationship became strained over the past several years. Huber believed that Larson was not providing proper care for Larson’s father and that Larson had abused Huber’s trust by allowing others to hunt on the Húber family’s land without permission. Huber also believed that Larson had punctured Huber’s tires with nails, shined flashlights into the Huber family home late at night, and cut wires so their cattle could get out. On the other hand, Larson’s wife testified that Huber made numerous phone calls and sent letters harassing the Larson family, which Larson later reported to the police.

The simmering dispute boiled over into violence in October. 2011. On the evening of October 7, 2011, Larson arrived at his father’s farm planning to duck .hunt the next morning. ■ N.L. was out of town that weekend for a wedding and, unbeknown to Larson, had made arrangements to have Huber, do his farm chores. Larson was surprised to encounter Huber at N.L.’s farm that evening. . During their encounter, Larson asked Huber several times to remove his farm equipment and to leave the property, but Huber, refused. Larson told Huber that he would do the chores and demanded that Huber not return the next day, Huber later told police that he believed Larson laughed at him and called him an idiot.

Huber called Delbert that evening and told him they needed to remove their farm equipment from N.L.’s property. Huber stated that Larson was harassing him, and that Larson had threatened them, saying “if we came back on -the place again that he was going to kill us.” Huber also told Delbert that Larson had stolen money from Huber’s wallet and parts from his *522van. Huber and Delbert, with the help of a neighbor, moved their farm equipment to a nearby farm.

On the morning of the murder, Huber drove to N.L.’s farm with Delbert. Delbert, who did not normally carry a gun, brought a rifle and ammunition with him. When they arrived, no one was at the farm. They then went to a neighbor’s house to check on their farm equipment. When they finished, Huber drove them both back to N.L.’s farm. On the way back to the farm, Delbert told Huber to stop the car. Delbert took the rifle out of the trunk and brought it into the car. Huber parked the ear so that the front end pointed toward the entrance of the driveway of N.L.’s farm. There was testimony that Huber got out of the car and went to N.L.’s barn to begin the chores, while Delbert remained seated in the car with the door open. Shortly thereafter, Larson arrived at the farm. An altercation ensued between Larson and Delbert. Delbert shot Larson, who was unarmed. Larson died from his injuries. !

Delbert testified that he did not tell Huber he planned to shoot Larson. He said that he did not ask Huber whéther he should bring a gun to N.L.’s farm, and that Huber never touched the gun. Huber did not inform anyone that Delbert killed Larson, and Delbert did not call the police until several hours after the murder.

The jury found Huber guilty of second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder, but acquitted him of first-degree murder. The district court sentenced Huber to 306 months in prison for second-degree intentional murder. A divided court of appeals panel affirmed, concluding that the accomplice-liability instructions given to the jury were plainly erroneous but that the error did.not affect Huber’s substantial rights. We granted review.

I.

Huber argues that the accomplice-liability instructions given to the jury failed to accurately state the law. According to Huber, the accomplice-liability jury instructions failed to explain the meaning of “intentionally aiding,” as required by State v. Milton, 821 N.W.2d 789, 807-08 (Minn.2012), and failed to use the word “intentionally” in describing aiding and abetting as an element of the crime. . .,

■ We review a district court’s jury instructions for an abuse of discretion. State v. Mahkuk, 736 N.W.2d 675, 682 (Minn.2007). The district court enjoys considerable latitude in selecting jury instructions and the language;of those instructions. State v. Kelley, 855 N.W.2d 269, 274 (Minn.2014). But the jury instructions must fairly and adequately explain the law of. the case and not materially misstate the law. State v. Carridine, 812 N.W.2d 130, 144 (Minn.2012); State v. Kuhnau, 622 N.W.2d 552, 556 (Minn.2001). We review the jury instructions as a whole to determine whether they fairly and adequately explain the ■ law. Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 274.

Huber acknowledges that he did not object to the accomplice-liability instructions, and therefore we review the instructions for plain error. Under the plain-error doctrine, the appellant must show that there was (1) an error; (2) that is plain; and (3) the error, affected substantial rights. State v. Griller, 583 N.W.2d 736, 740 (Minn.1998) (citing Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 467, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997)). If the appellant satisfies the first three prongs of the plain-error doctrine, “we may correct the error only if it ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.’ ” State v. Crows- *523breast, 629 N.W.2d 433, 437 (Minn.2001) (quoting Johnson, 520 U.S. at 467, 117 S.Ct. 1544).

Minnesota Statutes § 609.05 (2014) addresses when an accomplice is liable for a crime committed by someone else. It provides, in part: “A person is criminally liable for a crime committed by another if the person intentionally aids, advises, hires, counsels, or conspires with or otherwise procures the other to commit the crime.” Id., subd. 1. The statute, however, does not define the phrase “intentionally aids.”1

At issue in this case are the jury instructions for second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder, The instructions for each of these offenses described the meaning of “liability for crimes of another” and then set forth the elements of the crime that the , State was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Specifically, the “liability for crimes of another” portion of the instructions for both counts stated: “The defendant is guilty of a crime committed by another person when the defendant has intentionally aided the other person in committing it, or has intentionally advised, hired, counseled or conspired with, or otherwise, procured the other person to commit it.”

When setting forth the specific elements of the crime hybrid instructions that incorporated the theory of accomplice liability into the instruction for each offense were used.2 The hybrid instructions listing the elements of second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder contained 13 references to Delbert being “aided and abetted by” Huber. These instructions omitted the word “intentionally” every time they referred to Huber aiding and abetting Delbert.

We will first discuss our case law regarding jury instructions on accomplice liability. Then, using a plain-error analysis, we will apply that case law to the facts of this case to determine if Huber is entitled to a new trial based on alleged errors in the jury instructions for accomplice liability-

A.

We recently considered whether jury instructions on accomplice liability constituted plain error because they failed to properly instruct the jury on the “intentionally aiding” element of accomplice lia*524bility under Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 1. See Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 275; Milton, 821 N.W.2d at 806-08. In Milton, we held for the first time that the accomplice-liability instructions given to the jury must explain the “intentionally aiding” element of accomplice liability. 821 N.W.2d at 807. Specifically, the instructions must explain that to be criminally liable for the crimes of another, the State must prove that the defendant “knew his alleged accomplice was going to commit a crime and the defendant intended his presence or actions to further the commission of that crime.” Id. at 808. We reasoned that without providing the explanation of “intentionally aiding,” a reasonable jury would not know that it needed to find the presence of these two mens rea requirements in order to find the defendant guilty as an accomplice. Id.

Milton addressed the jury instructions for two charges: first-degree felony murder and attempted first-degree felony murder. Id. at 806-09. In the instruction setting out the elements of first-degree felony murder, the district court instructed the jury, in part, that it had to find the defendant “intentionally aided” the person who caused the death of the victim. Id. at 806. We concluded this instruction did not “properly explain the element of ‘intentionally aiding1 to the jury,” but we also concluded this error was not plain because we had “never before specifically required district courts to explain to juries that a defendant intentionally aids another person if the defendant knowingly and intentionally assists in the commission of the underlying crime.” Id. at 807. The jury instructions for attempted first-degree felony murder made no reference to “intentionally aiding” another. Id. at 808. We concluded these instructions were plainly erroneous because they omitted the intentionally aiding “element altogether.” Id.

In Kelley, the district court gave an unobjected-to accomplice-liability instruction that stated, in part: “The defendant is guilty of a crime committed by another person when the defendant has intentionally aided the other person in committing it.” 855 N.W.2d at 274 n. 5. We concluded the instruction was erroneous because it “failed to explain the ‘intentionally aiding’ element as required by Milton.” Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 275. We further concluded that this error was plain because Milton had been decided by the time of Kelley’s appeal. Id. at 277.

We conclude that the accomplice-liability instructions given in this case constituted plain error because, taken as a whole, they failed to properly inform the jury that the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Huber intentionally aided or assisted another in committing a crime. See Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 275; Milton, 821 N.W.2d at 807. The instructions on the elements for each offense were hybrid instructions that told the jury what the State had to prove to find Huber guilty as either a principal who committed the offense or as an accomplice who aided and abetted Delbert in committing it. But this portion of the instructions omitted the requirement that Huber’s aiding of Delbert be “intentional.”3, See Milton, 821 N.W.2d *525at 808 (concluding jury instructions on accomplice liability were plainly erroneous because they omitted the “intentionally aiding” element); see also State v. Watkins, 840 N.W.2d 21, 27-28 (Minn.2013) (holding that an unobjected-to jury instruction that omitted the “knowing” element of the offense constituted plain error).

The more general instructions addressing the law of accomplice liability further compounded this error. These instructions did state that a defendant is guilty of a crime committed by another if the defendant “intentionally aided the other person in committing it.” But like the instruction we found to be a plain error ⅛. Kelley, these instructions failed to explain the meaning of “intentionally aiding.’? See 855 N.W.2d at 275. They did not inform the jury that in order to conclude that Huber had intentionally aided another in committing a crime, the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Huber knew the other person was going to commit a crime and intended his actions or presence to further the commission of that offense.4 See id.

We- hold that the combined effects • of these errors resulted in accomplice-liability jury instructions that were plainly erroneous. The instructions not only failed to explain the meaning of intentionally aiding another in the commission of a crime, but they also failed to require that the aiding and abetting be intentional when stating the elements of the offense. Thus, the 'instructions erroneously allowed thé jury to convict Huber for his mere presence near the commission of the crime or because his actions assisted-Delbert in committing a crime, regardless of' Huber’s mens rea. Because thé instructiohs were plainly erroneous, we must next examine whether the instructions affected Huber’s substantial rights.

B.

An érroneous jury instruction affects a defendant’s substantial rights if the error wa's prejudicial and affected the outcome of thfe Case. State v. Wenthe, 865 N.W.2d 293, 299 (Minn.2015); Griller, 583 N.W.2d at 741. “An error in instructing the jury is prejudicial if there is a reasonable likelihood that giving the instruction in question had a significant effect on the jury’s verdict.” Watkins, 840 N.W.2d at 28 (quoting State v. Gomez, 721 N.W.2d 871, 880 (Minn.2006)). The defendant has the burden of proving prejudice, and it is a heavy burden. Id. We conclude Huber has met his burden of proving the plainly erroneous jury instructions affected his substantial rights.

First, Huber contested the State’s evidence that he intentionally aided Delbert in the commission of a crime, and he presented évidence that he did not intend to aid the commission of the crime.5 See *526 State v. Davis, 820 N.W.2d 525, 588 (Minn.2012) (holding that the defendant’s trial strategy impacted whether a plain error in the jury instructions affected the defendant’s substantial rights). Specifically, Huber argued and presented evidence that he did not know his father was going to shoot Larson, that,he was not present when the altercation occurred and Delbert shot Larson, and that he did not intend his actions to further the commission of the crime. Delbert testified that Huber never touched the rifle, that he did not ask Huber whether he should bring a rifle to N.L.’s farm on the morning of the murder, that he did not tell Huber he intended to shoot Larson, and that Huber was in the .barn when he shot Larson. Huber told police that he was in the barn when tlxe shooting occurred and that Delbert brought the rifle along for protection. Moreover, Huber argued and presented testimony that he was under the control of Delbert, who was an, abusive father. There was testimony by two witnesses that over the years Delbert hit Huber in the head with a baseball bat, slapped him in the face with a glove, and threatened,to kick him if he did not finish his work.

Second, the State’s evidence that Huber intentionally aided Delbert in shooting Larson was, not overwhelming. The State’s evidence on the intentionally aiding element was entirely circumstantial. There was no direct evidence that Huber knew Delbert intended to commit any crime against Larson on the morning of the murder' or that Huber was nearby when the altercation or the shooting occurred. Compare Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 284 (concluding there was no reasonable likelihood that erroneous jury instructions on accomplice liability had a significant effect on the verdict, in part, because there was strong proof of the intentionally aiding element, including that the defendant actively participated in the robbery by rummaging through the victim’s pockets while the victim was on the ground and punching and kicking the victim after his belongings were taken). Nor did Huber admit that he and Delbert had agreed to commit any crime or had taken steps in preparation to do so. Compare Milton, 821 N.W.2d at 797, 809-10 (concluding that the omission of the intentionally aiding element from the accomplice-liability jury instruction did not affect the defendant’s substantial rights, -in part, because the defendant admitted that he and his alleged accomplices had planned to rob the murder victim, had made “fake money” in preparation for doing so, and the defendant used his truck to drive his alleged accomplices to the planned robbery). Although the State presented circumstantial evidence on the intentionally aiding element, Huber presented evidence to the contrary that, ’ if believed by the jury, supported his argument that he did not know Delbert intended to shoot Larson and that Huber did not intend his presence or .actions to further the commission of Delbert’s crime. The State counters that in Kelley we. determined that the evidence need only be “considerable,” not overwhelming, in order to conclude that the defendant failed to show a plain error in the jury instructions affected his substantial rights. Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 284-85. But Kelley is distinguishable. Unlike in Kelley, the evidence on the intentionally aiding element in this case was highly contested and equivocal. Moreover, in Kelley we did not rely exclusively on the strength of the State’s evi*527dence in finding that the plain error in the jury instructions did not affect, Kelley’s substantial rights.. See id. at 284.

It is true that we have, at different times, used the words “overwhelming,” “considerable,” and' “ample” to describe the quantum of evidence required in determining whether a plain error in the jury instructions affected a- defendant’s substantial rights. See Milton, 821 N.W.2d at 809 (stating that the evidence was “ample”); Kelley, 855 N.W.2d at 283-84 (stating that the evidence was “considerable”). But these words are not contradictory. Rather, the words describe a large quantum of evidence presented by the State on the contested element, and the quantum of evidence necessary may depend on our analysis of any other relevant factors in a substantial-rights analysis. Here, the evidence presented by the State cannot be characterized as ‘‘overwhelming,” “considerable,” or “ample.” Given our analysis of other relevant factors, the State’s evidence was insufficient to overcome the prejudice caused by errors in the jury instructions.

In the end, the jury instructions in this case not only failed to explain the meaning of “intentionally” aiding another in the commission of a crime, but they also failed to require that the aiding and abetting be intentional when stating the elements of the offense. The jury therefore could have believed Huber’s version of events and yet still convicted him because of these errors. Specifically, the jury could have believed that Huber did not know Delbert intended to commit a crime and that Huber did not intend for his actions or presence to aid Delbert in the commission of a crime, and still have convicted him simply because the jury concluded Huber’s actions or presence at the farm aided Delbert in killing Larson. As a. result, we conclude that Huber has established that the plainly erroneous jury instructions affected his substantial rights.

C.

Thus, we must next consider the fourth prong of the plain-error test: whether a new trial is required to ensure the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings. A plain error that • affects a defendant’s substantial rights, without more, does not entitle a defendant, to a new trial. See United States v. Olano, 507 U,S. 725, 737, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). Rather, a new trial will only be granted when it is necessary to ensure the fairness, integrity, or public reputation qf judicial proceedings. See id. at 736-37, 113 S.Ct. 1770. Although the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings is sometimes served by ordering a new trial when a defendant’s substantial, rights were affected by a plain error, that is not always the case.

In Griller, we described the defendant’s version of events as “far-fetched,” and concluded that “[granting Griller a new trial under these circumstances would be an exercise in futility and a waste of judicial resources,” which would thwart the integrity of judicial proceedings. 583 N.W.2d at 742. The United States Supreme Court has similarly concluded that granting new trials in the face of uncontroverted or overwhelming evidence “encourages litigants to abuse the judicial, process and bestirs the public to ridicule it.” Johnson, 520 U.S. at 470, 117 S.Ct. 1544; see also United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 634, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002) (“The ... threat to the ‘fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings’ would be if respondents, despite the overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence that they were involved in a [crime], were to receive a sentence ;.. for [a lesser *528crime] because of an error [not] objected to at trial”).

The plain-error doctrine tempers the blow of a rigid application of the contemporaneous-objection requirement. See Minn. R.Crim. P. 31.02 (allowing plain errors that affect substantial rights to be considered on appeal even if the error was not brought to the district court’s attention). The doctrine, however, is discretionary and authorizes appellate courts'to correct only “particularly egregious errors,” United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 163, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982) — in other words, those errors that “seriously affect the fairness, integrity,' or public reputation Of judicial proceedings,” United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936). Put differently, the fourth prong is satisfied only “in those circumstances in which a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result.” Frady, 456 U.S. at 163 n. 14, 102 S.Ct. 1584. This rule balances our need to encourage trial participants to seek a fair and accurate outcome the first time around against the principle .-that an injustice must be redressed. Id. at 163, 102 S.Ct. 1584; see also United States v. Young, 470-U.S. 1, 15-16, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985).

We conclude that a new trial is required to protect the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings. The error in this case was particularly serious because it prevented the jury from fully considering Huber’s defense that he did not intentionally aid Delbert in committing any crime. The instructions allowed the jury to convict Huber merely because he was present at the farm or took some actions that may have assisted Delbert in committing an offense. The evidence presented at trial to prove that Huber intentionally aided Delbert was not overwhelming and was disputed. Based on the'specific facts of this case, we conclude that allowing Huber to receive a new trial will protect the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of the judicial proceedings.

Reversed, and remanded.

HUDSON, J., not having been a member of this court at .the time of submission, took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

CHUTIGH, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.-

OPINION

STRAS, Justice.

Based on a homicide that occurred during an aggravated robbery, a jury found appellant Nisius Dealvin McAllister guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder. The district court entered a judgment of conviction of first-degree premeditated murder, and sentenced McAllister to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. McAllis-ter challenges his conviction on two grounds. First, he argues that the State’s evidence was insufficient to prove that he intentionally aided another in committing the murder. Second, he argues that the district court erred when it admitted recordings of portions of his interrogations into evidence that included statements he made after allegedly invoking his right to remain silent. We affirm.

I.

Michael McMillan was shot and killed after enduring a brutal beating at the hands of three men: McAllister and two of his nephews, Leondis McAllister (“Leon-dis”) and Justin Fineday (“Fineday”). These events occurred early in the morning in an alley in south Minneapolis, where four eyewitnesses saw McAllister and his nephews repeatedly punch and kick McMillan. During the beating, the men removed McMillan’s clothes and one of the men shot him. At trial, multiple witnesses testified that, after the three men fled from the alley, one of the men returned to shoot McMillan again. McMillan died 2 weeks later of an infection from gunshot wounds to his neck and lower back.

Just a few minutes after the shooting, police officers arrested McAllister and Fineday approximately two blocks south of the alley, while another officer arrested Leondis on the same block where the officers arrested the' other two men. Among *52other things, the officers discovered two cellphones, a set of keys, and an envelope and a piece of paper both bearing McMillan’s name near the location where the officers arrested McAllister and Fineday. The officers also found a loaded .380 semiautomatic pistol — the same caliber handgun used to shoot McMillan — in a nearby flowerbed.

Following the arrests, two police officers interrogated McAllister. During the interrogation, McAllister eventually admitted that he was present during the altercation and implied that he knew the identity of the shooter. Nevertheless, he was unwilling to disclose the shooter’s identity, and expressed frustration that neither of his nephews was willing to admit involvement in the crime. After several hours in the interrogation room, McAllister stood up, removed his watch, sat back down, arid then told the officers, “[n]o, ain’t no sense in talking no more man. You may as well cuff me up, book me, whatever. It’s just that simple.” Following that statement, the officers continued to speak with McAl-lister for about 20 minutes before terminating the interrogation and handing him a business card in case he changed his mind.

Before beginning the booking process, the officers allowed McAllister to see Leondis, who told McAllister that he had admitted his involvement in the crime. At that point, McAllister immediately asked to speak with the officers again. Ten minutes after the initial interrogation ended, the officers resumed the interrogation, without issuing a second Miranda warning to McAllister. McAllister then provided additional details about the crime that he had not previously disclosed to the officers. The officers again interviewed McAllister 2 days later, focusing their questions primarily on which of the two nephews was the shooter.

Prior to trial, McAllister moved to suppress the portions of his interrogation that followed his statement, “ain’t no sense in talking no more man.” The district court denied the motion, concluding that McAl-lister’s statement did not constitute an unambiguous invocation of his right to remain silent. At trial, the State played recordings that included significant portions of McAllister’s interviews with the police. The State’s theory of the case was that McAllister was an accomplice to the murder committed by one of his two nephews.

The jury found McAllister guilty of both first-degree premeditated murder, Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2014), and first-degree felony murder during the commission of an aggravated robbery, Minn.Stat. § 609.185(a)(3). The district court entered a judgment of conviction on the first-degree premeditated murder count and sentenced McAllister to life in prison without the possibility of release. See Minn.Stat. § 609.106, subd. 2(1) (2014).

II.

The first question presented by this case is whether the State introduced sufficient evidence to prove McAllister’s guilt as an accomplice to McMillan’s murder. A person is liable for an offense committed by another person as an accomplice if he or she “intentionally aids, advises, hires, counsels, or conspires with or otherwise procures [another person] to commit the crime.” Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 1 (2014) (the “accomplice-liability statute”). The phrase “intentionally aids” includes two “important and necessary principles: (1) that the defendant ‘knew that his alleged accomplices were going to commit a crime,’ and (2) that the defendant ‘intended his presence or actions to further the commission of that crime.’ ” State v. Milton, 821 N.W.2d 789, 805 *53(Minn.2012) (quoting State v. Mahkuk, 736 N.W.2d 675, 682 (Minn.2007)). Under the next provision in the statute, an accomplice is also criminally “liable” for “any other crime committed in pursuance of the intended crime if reasonably foreseeable by the person as a probable consequence of committing or attempting to commit the crime ■ intended.” Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2 (2014).1

McAllister’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence argument focuses exclusively on the fact that he did not intend to aid a murder. But even if he did not “intentionally aid[ ]” a murder, as he argues, he is still liable under Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2, for any crimes committed “in pursuance of’ the crime he intended to aid — in this case, an aggravated robbery. Thus, sufficient evidence exists for McAllister’s conviction under subdivision 2, regardless of whether he knew that one of his nephews would kill McMillan, if: (1) he was an accomplice in the aggravated robbery; (2) the murder was committed in furtherance of the aggravated robbery; and (3) the murder was reasonably foreseeable as a probable consequence of the aggravated robbery. See State v. Swanson, 707 N.W.2d 645, 659 (Minn.2006); see also State v. Valtierra, 718 N.W.2d 425, 438-39 (Minn.2006) (stating in an accomplice-liability case that murder may be a probable consequence of an aggravated drug robbery).

A.

To determine whether the evidence is sufficient to uphold McAllister’s conviction of first-degree premeditated murder, we begin with the sufficiency of the evidence for aggravated robbery. We focus principally on the “intentionally aids” requirement, which is the emphasis of McAllis-ter’s argument on appeal.

The “intentionally aids” element of accomplice liability is a state-of-mind requirement. It is rare for the State to establish a defendant’s state of mind through direct evidence. See State v. Cooper, 561 N.W.2d 175, 179 (Minn.1997). The “intentionally aids” requirement of accomplice liability is no different. A jury may infer the requisite state of mind for accomplice liability through circumstantial evidence, including the defendant’s presence at the scene of the crime, a close association with the principal offender before and after the crime, a lack of objection or surprise under the circumstances, and flight from the scene of the crime with the principal offender. State v. Hawes, 801 N.W.2d 659, 668 (Minn.2011).

In this case, the State relied solely on circumstantial evidence to prove McAl-lister’s state of mind. When a challenge is to the sufficiency of the circumstantial evidence supporting a conviction, we apply the following two-step analysis:

First, we must identify the circumstances proved, giving deference to the jury’s acceptance of the proof of these circumstances and rejection of evidence in the record that conflicted with the *54circumstances proved by the State. Second, we independently examine the reasonableness of all inferences that might be drawn from the circumstances proved, including inferences consistent with a hypothesis other than guilt. Thus, our review consists of determining whether the circumstances proved are consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any rational hypothesis except that of guilt.

State v. Anderson, 789 N.W.2d 227, 241-42 (Minn.2010) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). This case requires us to determine whether the circumstances proved by the State support a rational hypothesis that McAllister knew that Leondis and Fineday were going to commit an aggravated robbery and that he intended his presence or actions to further the commission of that crime.2 If so, the evidence is sufficient only if the circumstances proved are inconsistent with any rational hypothesis other than guilt. See State v. Bahtuoh, 840 N.W.2d 804, 810-11 (Minn.2013) (describing how to apply the circumstantial-evidence standard to an accomplice-liability case).

Under the first step of the circumstantial-evidence standard, we identify the circumstances proved by the State. The State’s evidence established that McAllis-ter, Leondis, and Fineday accompanied McMillan into an alley on the night in question. While in the alley, the three men, acting together, each repeatedly punched and kicked McMillan. The assault lasted as long as 3 minutes and was particularly brutal. One eyewitness testified that he saw “three men beating the crap out of another man on the ground,” and that the men were “taking full force soccer kicks towards his head.” The witness told a 911 dispatcher that he did not know if McMillan would survive the assault, and recounted during his testimony that “it was one of the most horrific things [he’d] ever seen in [his] life.” During the beating, the men stripped McMillan of his clothes until he was completely naked and then one of them placed some of McMillan’s clothes in a nearby garbage can while the others continued to stomp on his head. Witnesses saw one of the men fire a gun toward McMillan before fleeing down the alley with some of McMillan’s possessions. According to several of the witnesses, one of the men returned to the alley and shot McMillan again. Shortly after the second gunshot, police officers apprehended all three men approximately two blocks south of the alley. The officers discovered a number of items near the location where they arrested McAllister and Fineday, including a handgun in a nearby flowerbed, two cellphones, a set of keys, and an envelope and a piece of paper with McMillan’s name on them.

The second step of the circumstantial-evidence standard requires us to determine whether the circumstances proved are consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any rational hypothesis other than guilt. The circumstances proved give rise to a number of reasonable inferences re*55garding McAllister’s mental state. As to McAllister’s knowledge, even if he did not know that his nephews were going to beat and rob McMillan when the men entered the alley, we can infer that he acquired such knowledge as the altercation progressed. See Swanson, 707 N.W.2d at 659 (stating that a defendant’s presence at the scene of the crime can be used to infer the requisite state of mind for accomplice liability). The evidence presented at trial, particularly from the eyewitnesses, established that each of the men, including McAllister, fully participated in beating McMillan, and that none of them withdrew from the encounter once it started. Nor did any of them express surprise as the confrontation escalated. See id. (noting that a “lack of objection or surprise under the circumstances” can support an inference of accomplice liability). Indeed, witnesses described the beating as brutal and lasting several minutes, plenty of time for each man to understand fully the nature of the events unfolding before him.

In addition, the circumstances proved by the State support an inference that McA-lister intended his actions to further the commission of the crime. Ml three men were full participants in the beating and the robbery, as each punched and kicked McMillan after they forced him to the ground, took part in stripping him of his clothing, and pilfered his possessions. One can also reasonably infer, based on the familial relationship and the unwillingness of McAlister to implicate either of his two nephews as the shooter, that McAlister had a “close association with [Leondis and Fineday] before and after the crime.” Id. Accordingly, based on the circumstances proved by the State’s evidence, it was reasonable for the jury to have concluded that McAlister both knew that Leondis and Fineday were going to commit a crime and intended his presence and actions to further the commission of that crime.

McAlister nevertheless argues that the circumstances proved also support a rational hypothesis consistent with his innocence — namely, that he did not know that one of his nephews had a gun and that he did not intend to assist either one of them in shooting McMillan. McAlister’s argument, however, addresses the wrong question. At least at this stage of the analysis, the question is not whether he had the requisite state of mind to be an accomplice to a first-degree premeditated murder, but rather whether he was an accomplice to first-degree aggravated robbery. If he was an accomplice to aggravated robbery, then under Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2, he is also “liable for any other crime committed in pursuance of the intended crime if reasonably foreseeable by [him] as a probable consequence of committing ... the crime intended.” Under these facts, there is no rational hypothesis by which McAlis-ter is innocent of the offense of first-degree aggravated robbery.

B.

Having addressed McAlister’s arguments regarding his state of mind, we will now consider whether his complicity in the aggravated robbery renders him “liable” for the first-degree premeditated murder committed by one of his nephews. Minn. Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2. McAlister’s liability for first-degree premeditated murder depends on whether there was sufficient evidence that one of his nephews committed the murder in furtherance of the aggravated robbery, and whether it was reasonably foreseeable that the murder was a probable consequence of the aggravated robbery.3 See id.

*56We begin with the first requirement, which is whether the State presented sufficient evidence that the murder was committed in furtherance of the aggravated robbery. When we have discussed the “in furtherance of’ requirement, we have focused on the “common design” or “common purpose” of the participants. For example, in an early murder case, we stated that, even though only one of the assailants fired “the fatal shot,” each of the accomplices had to “be held accountable” because the murder “was in furtherance of the original unlawful design” of the robbery. State v. Barrett, 40 Minn. 77, 80, 41 N.W. 463, 464 (1889).

The “common design” of the three men in this case was to beat and rob McMillan. It is clear from the evidence that all three men shared this common design because each fully participated in a brutal beating that itself could have led to McMillan’s death. As to whether the murder was “in furtherance of’ the intended crime, Barrett is instructive because, as in that case, the jury could have inferred that the men shot McMillan to overcome his resistance to the robbery. See id.; State v. Pierson, 530 N.W.2d 784, 789 (Minn.1995) (holding that a shooting was “in furtherance of’ a robbery when “the first shot was fired just after [the victim] stated ‘get off me’ and resisted the robbery effort”). In addition, killing McMillan furthered the commission of the robbery by facilitating the escape of the three men, preventing McMillan from later identifying his assailants, and preventing the possibility of retaliation from McMillan at some point in the future. See State v. Russell, 503 N.W.2d 110, 114 (Minn.1993) (stating that eliminating the possibility of retaliation may be a reason for killing a victim in furtherance of a robbery); State v. Merrill, 428 N.W.2d 361, 369 (Minn.1988) (listing the identification of the assailants and facilitation of escape as two reasons why a killing might be in furtherance of a robbery). Accordingly, we conclude that the only reasonable inference is that the murder was committed in furtherance of the robbery, and that there is no rational hypothesis consistent with the possibility that the murder was unconnected to the common design of the robbery.

We now turn to the second requirement, which is whether the State presented sufficient evidence that a murder was reasonably foreseeable as a probable consequence of the aggravated robbery. Based on the evidence presented, the jury could have inferred that a reasonably foreseeable and probable consequence of the brutal beating was that McMillan would die. As we have stated, the “reasonably foreseeable” standard is objective, even though the standard operates based only on what would be reasonably foreseeable to a person in the defendant’s shoes. See State v. Earl, 702 N.W.2d 711, 721 (Minn.2005). In other words, as applied here, reasonable foreseeability is about “[w]hether the defendant could [have] reasonably foresee[n] that the victim would be murdered,” Pierson, 530 N.W.2d at 789, *57not whether the defendant accurately predicted the murder. In making this determination, the jury may make reasonable inferences based on experience and common sense. State v. Atkins, 543 N.W.2d 642, 646 (Minn.1996); see also State v. Cooper, 561 N.W.2d 175, 179 (Minn.1997) (explaining that a jury may infer that “a person intends the natural and probable consequences of his actions”).

The circumstances proved by the State include the fact that multiple witnesses testified to the brutality of the beating, including one witness who said, “they were just beating him and beating him and beating him, and I just was like this guy’s going to die, this guy’s going to die.” The jury could have used common sense to conclude, based collectively on the eyewitness statements, that it was reasonably foreseeable to McAllister that the three men would murder McMillan.

McAllister argues that the ultimate cause of death — here, death from an infection arising out of the shooting — was not reasonably foreseeable to him, even if it was reasonably foreseeable that McMillan could die from the injuries he sustained in the beating. Specifically, he claims that he is not guilty of first-degree premeditated murder because he had no idea that one of his nephews was carrying a gun and would use it during the confrontation.

We reject McAllister’s argument for two reasons. First, there is no requirement in a murder case that an accomplice must accurately predict the cause of death of the victim. Indeed, such a requirement would be inconsistent with the text of Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2, which turns on whether the “other crime” was “reasonably foreseeable by the person as a probable consequence of committing ... the crime intended.” See Pierson, 530 N.W.2d at 789 (holding that it is unnecessary “[ujnder Minnesota law ... to have predicted with certainty that a companion would intentionally murder the victim”). Setting aside the state-of-mind requirements, the focus in a typical murder case is on whether the defendant’s or an accomplice’s acts caused a particular result — ie., the death of the victim — and not on the particular method or instrumentality the perpetrator used to cause the death. See generally 1 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 6.4, at 465-66 (2d ed.2003) (stating that the actus reus for murder is the defendant’s intentional conduct that causes “the fatal result”); 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 14.2, at 433-34 (2d ed.2003) (describing the variety of means and methods of producing an intentional death that may constitute murder). Therefore, contrary to McAllister’s argument, a person who has participated in a killing is not relieved of liability just because the reasonably foreseeable result occurred in an unexpected manner. See, e.g., State v. Bailey, 732 N.W.2d 612, 615 (Minn.2007) (upholding a conviction of first-degree murder while committing criminal sexual conduct when the cause of death was a heart attack suffered by the victim during a sexual assault).

Second, even if it were true that McAl-lister did not initially know that one of his nephews had a gun, the circumstances proved by the State include the fact that one of the three men fired at least one shot at McMillan before they fled from the alley. Thus, it was reasonable for the jury to have inferred, based on the circumstances proved, that McAllister knew that McMillan would die of a gunshot wound. See Atkins, 543 N.W.2d at 647 (describing as “crucial” the fact that, even if one of the accomplices did not know the other was armed, he surely knew the principal was armed “from the moment [the first] shot was fired”). Consequently, it is immateri*58al, both legally and factually, that McAllis-ter may not have known that one of his nephews was carrying a gun when the men first entered the alley.

Moreover, we reiterate that Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2, does not impose an independent state-of-mind requirement. Once the defendant’s state of mind has been proven for the “intended crime” under Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 1, the defendant is also “liable” for any other reasonably foreseeable crimes committed in pursuance of the intended crime under Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2. Thus, it is incorrect to say, as McAllister does, that he cannot be convicted of first-degree premeditated-murder simply because he neither premeditated nor intended to kill McMillan. In fact, we specifically rejected this argument in State v. Souvannarath, in which the question was whether a district court had erred when it failed to instruct the jury that it had to find that the defendant “both premeditated and specifically intended the death of the victim” to find him guilty of first-degree premeditated murder as an accomplice. 545 N.W.2d 30, 33 (Minn.1996); see also State v. White, 684 N.W.2d 500, 508 (Minn.2004) (rejecting a similar argument as in Souvannarath). In answering that question in the negative, we observed that the defendant’s argument was “fundamentally flawed” because the jury had to find only that the defendant had the state of mind necessary for accomplice liability, not the state of mind associated with the offense of conviction.4 Souvannarath, 545 N.W.2d at 33. Under Souvannarath, therefore, it is not necessary for an accomplice to have premeditated or intended a killing in order to be guilty of first-degree premeditated murder as an accomplice.

Accordingly, in light of the circumstances proved by the State and the application of Minn.Stat. § 609.05, subd. 2, the only rational hypothesis supported by the circumstances proved, viewed as a whole, is that McAllister is guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.

III.

The second question presented by this case is whether the district court erred when it denied McAllister’s motion to suppress the portions of the interrogation that occurred after he told the officers: “[n]o, ain’t no sense in talking no more man. You may as well cuff me up, book me, whatever. It’s just that simple.” The district court denied the motion to suppress because it concluded that McAl-lister’s statement did not constitute an unequivocal invocation of his right to remain silent. See State v. Munson, 594 N.W.2d 128, 138-39 (Minn.1999). We need not determine whether the district court’s conclusion was correct, because any error in admitting those portions of the recordings that followed McAllister’s alleged invocation of his right to remain silent was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Juarez, 572 N.W.2d 286, 291 (Minn.1997).

Although the presentation of a self-incriminating statement during trial is a powerful piece of evidence for the State, “a determination that the trial court erred in admitting the statement does not per se *59result in reversal of the conviction for a new trial.” State v. Robinson, 427 N.W.2d 217, 224 (Minn.1988); see also United States v. Santos, 285 F.3d 1105, 1108 (8th Cir.2000) (affirming a conviction because any error in admitting two confessions was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt). Rather, the conviction may stand, notwithstanding a violation of the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, “provided that the admission of the statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Robinson, 427 N.W.2d at 224.

In determining whether the presentation of allegedly inadmissible evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we look to the record as a whole and ask, “[w]hat effect did the jury’s hearing [the defendant’s] statement ... actually have on the guilty verdict rendered?” Juarez, 572 N.W.2d at 292. When the alleged error implicates a constitutional right, as here, the State bears the burden to prove the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Morrow, 884 N.W.2d 715, 729 n. 7 (Minn.2013). The State satisfies its burden if it shows the verdict was “surely unattributable” to the error. Juarez, 572 N.W.2d at 292. “[Overwhelming evidence of guilt is a factor, often a very important one,” when determining whether an error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 291. But we also consider “the manner in which the evidence was presented, whether it was highly persuasive, whether it was used in closing argument, and whether it was effectively countered by the defendant.” State v. Al-Naseer, 690 N.W.2d 744, 748 (Minn.2005).

When Minneapolis police officers interviewed McAllister after the murder, he initially denied his involvement in the shooting. Even so, his answers that preceded the alleged invocation were incriminating because he implied that he participated in the beating. When referring to his involvement in the altercation, he stated, for example, “[y]ou can say assault if you want to” and that he was “accountable,” just “not for the shooting.” He also acknowledged that he was “going [away] for a long time.” However, he repeatedly avoided identifying the shooter, responding at one point that it “ain’t easy.... [t]o give up the person who had the gun.”

After several hours, McAllister eventually decided to stop speaking with the officers, and made the statement by which he alleges he invoked his right to remain silent. The officers then escorted McAllis-ter to see Leondis, and following that encounter, McAllister asked to speak with the officers again.5 Once the interrogation resumed, McAllister was no longer evasive. He recounted a number of details about both the beating and the shooting, and identified Fineday as the shooter. He also stated that, although he did not see the gun earlier that evening, he had seen it before. He told the officers that, after the first shot, McMillan pleaded for help. He also drew a map of the scene and explained that, once the men fled from the alley, Fineday said, “[w]e gotta shut” McMillan up. According to McAllister, Fineday then pulled out a gun, which McAllister referred to as Fineday’s “thud-der.” McAllister also recalled Fineday talking about how McMillan had soiled himself, which McAllister and his nephews found amusing. McAllister said that Fine-day then shot McMillan again, and that *60Fineday told the men upon his return that McMillan “had [it] coming.”

Two days later in a follow-up interview, McAllister changed his story. When the officers confronted McAllister with eyewitness accounts that suggested that Leondis was the shooter, McAllister said he “didn’t see the whole thing,” but acknowledged that the eyewitness accounts were not consistent with his previous statement that Fineday was the shooter. He maintained throughout the follow-up interview that he did .not know who fired the first shot. McAllister also backtracked on the statements he made prior to the alleged invocation, stating that “[w]hoever told you I was standing right there [during the confrontation,] they told you a goddamn lie.”

Based on the particular facts of this case, we conclude that any error in playing the portions of the recordings following his alleged invocation was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We acknowledge that playing the recordings to the jury was not helpful to McAllister, but we must also take into account that, even without the recordings, the State presented the jury with overwhelming evidence of McAllis-ter’s guilt, and that the Al-Naseer factors do not favor reversal. See State v. Townsend, 546 N.W.2d 292, 297 (Minn.1996) (“We have a natural hesitation to reverse a conviction on errors ... in the admission of evidence, where the evidence of guilt is strong ..., [b]ut to reach the conclusion[ ] that the errors were without prejudice we must hold that the guilt of defendant was conclusively proven.” (alteration in original) (quoting State v. Flowers, 262 Minn. 164, 168, 114 N.W.2d 78, 81 (1962))).

We begin with the other evidence of McAllister’s guilt. Four separate eyewitnesses, each of whom observed the entirety of the confrontation in the alley, described how the three men brutally beat McMillan while he was defenseless on the ground. Each described a prolonged and violent attack. In the words of one witness:

I mean this was going on for an extended amount [of] time that they were just beating him and beating him and beating him, and I just was like this guy’s going to die, this guy’s going to die, he’s laying on the ground in a fetal position moaning, crying, begging for help and I’m watching all of them just take turns one after the other kicking him as hard they can and I’m just like this guy is not going to live any longer.

As he watched the beating unfold, that same witness described to a 911 dispatcher how “there’s like three guys kicking the guy in the head,” and that he had doubts about whether the victim could live through the beating. Another witness recounted that McMillan was screaming and shouting for help as the three men hit him. Yet another witness told a 911 dispatcher that the three men were dragging McMillan and “stomping on his head” during the assault, while he was naked on the ground. Finally, one of the witnesses described the entire incident as “one of the most horrific things [he had] ever seen in [his] life.” Thus, it is fair to say that, insofar as the details of the beating are concerned, much of what was. in the recordings was cumulative of the other evidence the State presented at trial. See State v. Bradford, 618 N.W.2d 782, 794 (Minn.2000) (noting that the cumulative nature of the evidence is relevant to determining whether the erroneous admission of evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt).

McAllister’s primary complaint regarding the recorded statements seems to be that it undermined his credibility to the jury. It is certainly true that the statements, considered as a whole, portrayed McAllister as untrustworthy because he changed his story several times over the *61course of the interrogations. However, even the improper admission of recordings containing inconsistent statements by a defendant does not require reversal when the evidence is cumulative of other, properly admitted evidence bearing on a defendant’s credibility. See State v. McDonald-Richards, 840 N.W.2d 9, 19 (Minn.2013).

In this case, the jury had other evidence before it, all of which was admissible, that casted doubt on McAllister’s credibility. For example, .the police officer who arrested McAllister testified that, when he stopped McAllister,. McAllister gave conflicting accounts about what he was doing and where he was going. McAllister also changed his story during the course of the first interrogation, even before he allegedly had invoked his right to remain silent. At first, McAllister denied even touching McMillan, but later indicated that he participated in the confrontation . between McMillan and his nephews. Finally, McAllister’s statements from the first interrogation — again, before he allegedly invoked his right to remain silent — were not credible in light of the testimony of Fine-day and the four eyewitnesses. McAllister repeatedly stated that he “did nothing”— that is, he did not touch, kick, or beat McMillan, he did not know that anyone had taken anything from McMillan, and he could not identify the shooter because he “wasn’t there” when the shots were fired. However, Fineday and multiple eyewitnesses directly contradicted McAllister’s statements by testifying that .McAllister fully participated in the beating. Accordingly, to the extent that the disputed portions of the recordings reflected negatively on McAllister’s credibility, those portions were cumulative of other evidence that had already given the jury a negative impression of McAllister’s trustworthiness. See McDonald-Richards, 840 N.W.2d at 20 (concluding that a videotaped statement “was not particularly persuasive evidence with respect to [the defendant’s] credibility because it was cumulative of other overwhelming evidence of her lack of truthfulness”).

The remaining Alr-Naseer factors also support the conclusion that the verdict was “surely unattributable” to the allegedly inadmissible recordings. See Juarez, 572 N.W.2d at 292. First, nothing about the presentation of the recordings suggests that the State used them in an inflammatory or highly prejudicial manner. In fact, the State played the recordings at the very end of its case-in-chief, only after it had presented the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses and Fineday. Thus, by the time the jury heard the statements, it had already heard much of the same evidence through other testimony. Of course, we must also take into account the fact that the jury would have heard some of the statements, including those in which McAl-lister was evasive, regardless of whether other statements were inadmissible.

Second, although the State referenced some of the allegedly inadmissible statements in its closing argument, most of the references related to whether McAllister had knowledge of the gun — an issue that McAllister disputed the entire time he was talking with the officers and that was largely cumulative of the overwhelming evidence that he was a full participant in the beating. In other words, the overwhelming evidence regarding the brutality of the beating and the serious injuries suffered by McMillan made the dispute about the gun largely immaterial to the disputed question of whether death was a “reasonably foreseeable” consequence of the three men’s actions. Indeed, the jury did not need to speculate about whether death was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the men’s actions because one of the witnesses told them that, based on his own *62observations about the beating, McMillan was “not going to live any longer.”

Third, although defense counsel was not able to effectively counter all of the evidence presented through the allegedly inadmissible portions of the recordings, he was able to counter some of it, including the evidence about the gun. Defense counsel repeatedly highlighted, for example, that there was no evidence tying McAllister to the gun and that the State had failed to prove that the gun was the murder weapon because the results from ballistic testing were inconclusive.

In sum, after reviewing the trial record, we conclude that, even if the district court erred when it failed to suppress portions of McAllister’s recorded statements, any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the verdict was surely unattributable to the error.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm McAllister’s conviction of first-degree premeditated murder.

Affirmed.

OPINION

MANNHEIMER, Judge.

Richard L. Riley and another man, Edward F. Portalla, opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd of young people who were socializing around a bonfire on the Tanana River near Fairbanks. Two of the young people were seriously wounded. Riley and Portalla were indicted on two counts of first-degree assault (recklessly causing serious *206physical injury by means of a dangerous instrument) and six counts of third-degree assault (recklessly placing another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury by means of a dangerous instrument).1 Riley was ultimately convicted of all eight charges. In this appeal, Riley challenges his two convictions for first-degree assault.

The State faced a problem in prosecuting Riley and Portalla for first-degree assault: the physical evidence (in particular, the ballistics analysis) did not reveal which of the defendants’ weapons had fired the wounding shots. The bullet recovered from the body of one victim was so deformed that it could not be matched to either Riley’s or Portalla’s weapon, and the bullet that wounded the other victim passed through the victim’s body and was never recovered. Thus, with respect to each victim, the State could prove that the wound was inflicted by one of the two defendants, but the State could not easily prove which one.

At the close of Riley’s trial, the jurors were instructed that, with regard to each count of first-degree assault, they should decide whether Riley acted as a “principal” {ie., by firing the wounding shot) or, if they could not decide beyond a reasonable doubt which man fired the shots, they should decide whether Riley acted as an “accomplice” {ie., by aiding or abetting Portalla to fire the wounding shot). The jurors found Riley guilty as an accomplice in the wounding of both victims.2

Riley argues that his convictions for first-degree assault are flawed because the jurors were misinstructed regarding the elements of accomplice liability. The alleged flaw concerns the culpable mental state that must be proved when the State alleges a defendant’s complicity in another person’s crime.

In Echols v. State, 818 P.2d 691 (Alaska App.1991), this Court addressed a situation where a wife was charged as an accomplice to first-degree assault committed by her husband. The State’s evidence showed that the defendant summoned her husband to discipline their child, then stood by and watched while the husband inflicted serious physical injury on the child by whipping her with an electric cord.3 The question was whether the wife’s conduct was sufficient to establish her accountability as an accomplice to the assault.

The underlying crime of first-degree assault required proof that the principal {ie., the husband) acted recklessly with respect to the result {ie., the infliction of serious physical injury). The State argued that the wife could be convicted as an accomplice to the first-degree assault because (1) she solicited her husband to discipline the child and (2) she acted with the culpable mental state required for the crime — ie., she acted recklessly with respect to the possibility that the beating would result in serious physical injury to the child.

But this Court held that the wife’s complicity could not be premised on recklessness. Rather, we held that the wife could be held accountable as an accomplice to the first-degree assault only if the State proved that she acted intentionally with respect to the prohibited result — i.e., that her conscious objective was to have the child suffer serious physical injury.4

In the present appeal, Riley relies on Echols. He contends that his jury instruction on accomplice liability was flawed be*207cause it failed to clearly inform the jurors that the State was obliged to prove that Riley intended to have Portalla inflict serious physical injury on the victims (and not simply that Riley acted recklessly with respect to the possibility that Portalla’s conduct would cause this result).

The first hurdle Riley faces is that he did not object to the accomplice liability instruction that he now challenges. Riley must therefore show that the instruction amounted to plain error. We conclude that the jury instruction did not amount to plain error for two reasons: first, the instruction was not obviously flawed, but only potentially ambiguous on the question of the required culpable mental state; and second, the parties’ summations to the jury cured the potential ambiguity in the instruction.

But, more important, the State asks us to re-examine our holding in Echols. We have done so and, for the reasons explained here, we conclude that we misstated the law of complicity in Echols.

We were wrong when we said in Echols that liability for assault or criminal homicide under a complicity theory always requires proof that the defendant intended to cause the injury or the death, even though the underlying crime requires proof of only a lesser culpable mental state (extreme indifference to the value of human life, recklessness, or criminal negligence). When a defendant solicits, encourages, or assists another to engage in conduct, and does so with the intent to promote or facilitate that conduct, the defendant becomes accountable under AS 11.16.110(2) for that conduct. If that conduct leads to unintended injury or death, the defendant can be convicted of assault or criminal homicide if the government additionally proves that the defendant acted with the culpable mental state required for the charged crime.

Thus, to establish Riley’s guilt of first-degree assault in the present case, the State did not have to prove that Riley acted with the intention of causing serious physical injury. Rather, the State had to prove that Riley acted recklessly with respect to the possibility that serious physical injury would be inflicted on another person through (1) Riley’s own conduct or (2) the conduct of another for which Riley was accountable under AS 11.16.110. And, to prove that Riley was accountable for Portalla’s conduct under AS 11.16.110(2), the State had to prove (1) that Riley solicited, encouraged, or assisted Portalla’s act of shooting at the victims, and (2) that Riley did so with the intent to promote or facilitate this conduct.

To summarize: when two or more people are jointly accountable for conduct under Alaska’s complicity statute, and if, on the basis of that conduct, they are charged with a crime that is defined in terms of an unintended injury or death (i.e., an injury or death for which the accompanying culpable mental state is something other than “intentionally”), that same culpable mental state— whether it be “extreme indifference to the value of human life”, “recklessness”, or “criminal negligence” — applies to the State’s prosecution of all participants, whether they acted as principals or accomplices, and regardless of whether the resulting injury or death can be linked beyond a reasonable doubt to a particular defendant’s conduct.

The challenged jury instruction on complicity, and why we conclude that this instruction did not constitute plain eiror under the Echols rule

AS 11.16.110 codifies the basic rules governing vicarious liability in Alaska — i.e., it specifies the situations in which one person is criminally responsible for another person’s conduct. Under AS 11.16.110(2)(B), a defendant is legally accountable for another person’s conduct if the defendant “aids or abets the other in planning or committing the offense” and if the defendant does so “with [the] intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense”. Riley was convicted of first-degree assault under the theory that, acting with the intent to promote or facilitate Portalla’s commission of first-degree assault, he aided or abetted Portalla to engage in the conduct that resulted in the wounding of the victims.

In Echols, this Court was asked to construe the phrase “with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense” as it applied to crimes that require proof of a *208particular result (for instance, the infliction of serious physical injury). We held that a defendant does not intend “to promote or facilitate” the commission of such an offense unless the defendant intends that the prohibited result occur. Echols, 818 P.2d at 695. Thus, even though the principal might be convicted on proof that he or she acted “recklessly” or with “criminal negligence” with respect to the prohibited result, the accomplice could not be convicted unless the State proved that the accomplice acted “intentionally” with respect to that result.

At Riley’s trial, his attorney proposed the following instruction concerning Riley’s potential liability as an accomplice to first-degree assault:

A person is legally accountable for the conduct of another person which constitutes the offense if, with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense,' the person aids or abets the other person in planning or committing the offense.

In order to establish that the defendant is legally accountable as an accomplice in this case, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt each of the following:

[that] Richard L. Riley acted with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of ... Assault in the First Degree on [the victim]; [and]

[that Richard L. Riley] aided and abetted another person in planning or committing the offense.

Even though he was the proponent of this instruction in the trial court, Riley contends on appeal that the instruction was flawed because it did not specifically require the State to prove that Riley intended that the victim suffer serious injury. We agree with Riley that the instruction is ambiguous on this point. It could be read to require proof that Riley acted with intent to promote or facilitate the result required for first-degree assault (i.e., serious physical injury). On the other hand, the instruction could also be read to require proof merely that Riley acted with intent to promote or facilitate Portalla’s dangerous conduct. Under Echols, this second reading of the instruction would be erroneous.

But we have repeatedly held that ambiguities and potential flaws in jury instructions can be cured by the arguments of the parties.5 Here, the ambiguity in the instruction was clarified and corrected by Riley’s attorney during his summation to the jury. Riley’s attorney told the jury:

Defense Attorney: [The instruction] says [that the defendant has to] promote or facilitate the crime. Facilitate what? The offense. It’s not just a crime or something that happens. It has to be the [defendant’s] objective that’s — people, the two people, receive serious physical injury by means of a dangerous instrument. Assault in the first degree.

The prosecutor did not object to the defense attorney’s characterization of the elements of the State’s proof, nor did the prosecutor refute or contradict the defense attorney’s characterization during rebuttal. In fact, the prosecutor argued that the jury could infer, from Riley’s actions, that Riley wanted Por-talla to wound the victims.

Based on this record, we conclude that the parties’ closing arguments cured the potential ambiguity in the complicity instruction. Thus, even under the Echols rule, the challenged jury instruction did not give rise to plain error.

Moreover, for the reasons discussed in the next section of our opinion, we conclude that the rule announced in Echols is wrong.

Why we. conclude that our decision in Echols misstated the law governing complicity

(a) The underlying problem

Under the law of complicity codified in AS 11.16.110(2), even though a defendant may have solicited, encouraged, or assisted another person’s criminal conduct, the defendant can not be held criminally responsible for the other person’s conduct unless the State proves that the defendant acted “with intent *209to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense”. The question is: What did the legislature mean when they required proof that the accomplice acted with the intent to promote or facilitate “the offense”?

When the underlying offense requires proof of the defendant’s intention to cause a particular result (for example, first-degree murder under AS 11.41.100(a)(1), a crime that requires proof of an intent to cause death), the phrase “intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense” seems to offer little trouble. Because the principal must intend to cause death, any accomplice to first-degree murder must likewise intend to cause death.

But what if the underlying offense is defined in terms of an unintended result? For example, a person commits second-degree murder under AS 11.41.110(a)(2) by unintentionally causing a death while engaged in conduct “manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life”. Similarly, a person commits manslaughter under AS 11.41.120(a)(1) by unintentionally causing a death while acting recklessly with respect to the possibility that their conduct would cause death. When the underlying crime is defined in terms of an unintended result, what does AS 11.16.110(2) mean by the phrase “intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense ”?

In Echols, this Court interpreted the complicity statute in the context of a prosecution for first-degree assault, a crime that requires proof that the defendant acted recklessly with respect to a prohibited result (infliction of serious physical injury). We held that even though a person could be convicted of first-degree assault as a principal upon proof that they acted recklessly with respect to the prohibited result, a person could not be convicted as an accomplice unless the State proved a different, higher culpable mental state. Specifically, we held that whenever the underlying crime requires proof of a particular result, the statutory requirement that an accomplice “inten[d] to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense” means that the State must prove that the defendant acted “intentionally” with respect to this prohibited result.6

While this construction of the statute may have seemed plausible under the facts of Echols (which we discuss in more detail below), it leads to counter-intuitive results in situations like the one presented in Riley’s appeal.

For example, let us assume that Riley and Portalla engaged in the same conduct (jointly firing weapons into a crowd) but, through misfortune, one of their victims was killed. Let us further assume that the State believed that it was impossible to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this death was intended, so the State charged both defendants with manslaughter. And finally, let us assume that the evidence linking the homicide to either Riley’s or Portalla’s personal conduct was so inconclusive that it was impossible to say, beyond a reasonable doubt, which of them was the principal and which the accomplice.

Under the rule of Echols, neither Riley nor Portalla can be convicted of manslaughter in this hypothetical situation. The State can prove that both defendants acted recklessly with respect to the possibility that their conduct would cause human death, and this culpable mental state would be sufficient to establish the principal’s guilt of manslaughter. But the State can not prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) which of the defendants was the principal. This means that the State will have to prove both defendants’ guilt under a complicity theory. And Echols holds that, to prove guilt under a complicity theory, the State has to prove that the defendants acted with the intent to kill. In effect, Echols says that, under these circumstances, the State has to prove the defendants guilty of first-degree murder (intentional taking of human life) or the defendants will escape criminal liability for the homicide.

(b) The Echols rule departs from the common-law rule

Echols has not found favor among legal scholars. See, for example, the article by Audrey Rogers, “Accomplice Liability for Unintentional Crimes”, 31 Loyola of Los An-*210geles Law Review 1351 (1998), which cites Echols as an example of an overly narrow interpretation of the mens rea required for accomplice liability.7 And, indeed, Echols represents a distinctly minority view on this issue.8

This is not to say that other states impose accomplice liability without proof of mens rea. Quite the opposite. It is universally acknowledged that accomplice liability can not be based solely on the fact that a person’s words or actions had the effect of encouraging or assisting another to commit a crime. The government must also prove, at a minimum, that the accomplice provided the encouragement or assistance with knowledge of the other person’s criminal design. Many common-law decisions and many complicity statutes (such as Alaska’s) require the government to prove, not only that the defendant knew of the other person’s criminal design, but also that the defendant intended to further that criminal design. As stated in Perkins & Boyce,

Aid or encouragement to another who is actually perpetrating a felony will not make the aider or encourager guilty of the crime if [the aid or encouragement] is rendered without mens rea [ — that is,] if the giver does not know or have reason to know of the criminal intention of the other.... For guilt as [an accomplice,] it is necessary that the acts [of assistance] or words of encouragement be employed with that intent_In general!,] it is the abettor’s state of mind rather than the state of mind of the perpetrator which determines the abettor’s guilt or innocence!.]

Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law (3rd ed.1982), p. 743. LaFave & Scott states the same rule:

Under the usual requirement that the accomplice must intentionally assist or encourage, it is not sufficient that he [purposely] engaged in acts which, as it turned out, did give assistance or encouragement to the principal. Rather, the accomplice must intend that his acts have the effect of assisting or encouraging another.

Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W. Scott, Jr., Criminal Law (1986), § 6.7(c), Vol. 2, p. 143.

The common-law courts were split as to whether an act of encouragement or assistance, combined with mere knowledge of another person’s criminal design — as opposed to an intent to promote or facilitate the other person’s criminal design — was sufficient to establish complicity. ' Courts would sometimes hold defendants liable as accomplices to treason or other heinous felonies merely upon a showing that the defendant knowingly provided assistance to the traitor or the felon. But the courts generally held that knowledge was not enough — that complicity required proof of the defendant’s purpose to advance the criminal activity — when the underlying crime was less serious. See Perkins & Boyce, pp. 745^18; LaFave & Scott, § 6.7(d), Vol. 2, pp. 145-48.

An early draft of the Model Penal Code would have allowed complicity to be established by proof that the defendant provided aid or encouragement with knowledge of the other person’s intended criminal venture, even though the defendant lacked an accompanying purpose to promote or facilitate that criminal venture. But this provision was removed from the Model Penal Code after debate. See Perkins & Boyce, p. 748; La-Fave & Scott, § 6.7(d), Vol. 2, p. 148.9

But here we reach the critical question: If a defendant provides aid or encouragement to another, acting not only with knowledge of the other person’s intention to engage in unlawful or dangerous conduct, but also with the intent to promote or facilitate that unlawful or dangerous conduct, can the defendant be held accountable as an accomplice for a crime arising from the unintended consequences of that conduct? At common law, the answer is “yes”.

*211The rule at common law is that when a person purposely assists or encourages another person to engage in conduct that is dangerous to human life or safety, and unintended injury or death results, it does not matter which person actually caused the injury or death by their personal conduct. Any participant can be convicted of assault or manslaughter (or any similar crime involving proof of an unintended result) so long as the government can prove that the participant acted with the culpable mental state required for the underlying crime — “recklessness”, “criminal negligence”, “extreme indifference to the value of human life”, etc.

For example, as noted in Perkins & Boyce, “[t]hose present at an unlawful fist fight [who] encourage continued blows by shouts or gestures ... will be guilty of manslaughter if death should ensue.”10 See People v. Terry, 99 Ill.2d 508, 77 Ill.Dec. 442, 460 N.E.2d 746 (1984), holding that, under the common law, when a group of men conspire to commit a battery, and the battery leads to the death of the victim,

[e]ach person ... [is] responsible for the conduct of the other[s] ... done in furtherance of the intended battery. [If the] result of then’ concerted acts was murder ..., all are legally accountable for that murder.

Terry, 77 Ill.Dee. 442, 460 N.E.2d at 749. Accord, Carlisle v. State, 36 Ala.App. 241, 58 So.2d 638, 640 (1951) (holding a defendant guilty of manslaughter when he participated in an assault that left the victim dead).

Similarly, if two drivers engage in an unlawful race on a public highway, thus encouraging each other to drive recklessly, both will be guilty of manslaughter if one of them strikes and kills a third person.11 See, e.g., People v. Abbott, 84 A.D.2d 11, 445 N.Y.S.2d 344 (1981); Jones v. Commonwealth, 247 S.W.2d 517 (Ky.1952).

And courts applying the common law frequently hold that a person who knowingly allows and encourages an intoxicated person to drive a car can be held liable as an accomplice to manslaughter if the intoxicated person kills someone.12 Thus, in State v. Whitaker, 43 N.C.App. 600, 259 S.E.2d 316 (1979), the court stated:

[W]hen [unintended] death results from the operation of a motor vehicle by an intoxicated person ..., [and] the owner [of the vehicle] is present in the vehicle and ... with his knowledge and consent permits the intoxicated person to operate the vehicle[, the owner] is as guilty [of manslaughter] as the intoxicated driver.

Whitaker, 259 S.E.2d at 319. Accord, State v. Morris, 224 Tenn. 437, 456 S.W.2d 840, 846 (1970)13; Lems v. State, 220 Ark. 914, 251 S.W.2d 490, 493-94 (1952); Story v. United States, 16 F.2d 342, 344 (D.C.App.1926); Ex parte Liotard, 47 Nev. 169, 217 P. 960, 961 (1923).

Another example of the common-law rule of complicity is Black v. State, 103 Ohio St. 434, 133 N.E. 795 (1921), a case in which several police officers decided to test their marksmanship by shooting at a target at the back of a saloon. One of the shots (it was impossible to tell which one) passed through the saloon wall and killed a passerby. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that all of the participating officers were criminally responsible for the unintended death:

Where men combine either by express agreement or by actual conduct in the commission of an unlawful act ... [,] each and all of those so participating are held equally liable for any and all of the proximate results that could naturally and reasonably be anticipated....

Black, 133 N.E. at 797.

In another case, Ritzman v. People, 110 Ill. 362 (1884), 1884 WL 9892, a group of young men trespassed into an orchard to steal apples. When the land owner confronted them, they stoned him with hard clods of earth. One of these missiles hit the land owner in the head, killing him. It could not be determined which of the assailants struck *212the fatal blow. The Illinois Supreme Court held that any of the participants who purposely encouraged or assisted the battery could properly be convicted as an accomplice to involuntary manslaughter:

[W]e think it is wholly immaterial whether the missile in question was thrown by the hand of the accused or of some one of his co-trespassers. That the defendant was present — and, to say the least of it, encouraging the perpetration of the offense — can not' be denied.... [By encouraging] the offense, ... he is made a principal, and equally guilty with the one who personally gave the fatal blow.

Ritzman, 1884 WL at *4.

The same result was reached in State v. Guyton, 635 S.W.2d 353 (Mo.App.1982), a ease in which the defendant participated in an assault on the victim, resulting in the victim’s death. The court upheld the defendant’s conviction for manslaughter under a complicity theory. The court explained,

[T]he defendant’s liability for manslaughter is not dependent upon her intent to promote the commission of manslaughter. Her liability stems from her intent to aid and abet the assault out of which the manslaughter arose.... If the defendant aids the actor in an assault, with the intent to promote that offense, and the actor unintentionally kills the victim, then the defendant is liable for manslaughter as an aider and participant.

Guyton, 635 S.W.2d at 358.

Similarly, in People v. Bolden, 59 Ill.App.3d 441, 16 Ill.Dec. 791, 375 N.E.2d 898 (1978), a group of men were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter based on evidence that, acting together, they fired some 15 to 20 shots into the first-floor breezeway of an apartment building. Two of these shots struck a woman who lived in the building, killing her. It could not be determined which weapon or weapons fired the fatal bullets.14

The court acknowledged that, under the common law of Illinois, “[t]o be accountable for the acts of another, one must have a specific intent to promote or facilitate the commission of a crime”.15 However, the court ruled, “To be guilty of involuntary manslaughter[,] one need not intend that death ensue from his reckless acts, as the only mental state required is a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death or great bodily harm will be the result of such acts.”16 The court concluded that a person could be convicted as an accomplice to involuntary manslaughter if the person intentionally abetted someone else’s reckless conduct, consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that this conduct would result in death or great bodily injury.17 Thus, if the government showed that a defendant purposely encouraged or aided the shooting spree, acting with conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the shooting spree would cause someone’s death, that defendant could properly be convicted of involuntary manslaughter under a complicity theory.18

(c) The Echols rule departs from the interpretation adopted by other states whose complicity statutes, like Alaska’s, are based on the Model Penal Code

Alaska’s complicity statute is based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(3). This section reads:

A person is an accomplice of another person in the commission of an offense if:

(a) with the purpose of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense, he

(i) solicits [the] other person to commit it, or

(ii) aids or agrees or attempts to aid [the] other person in planning or committing it, or

(iii) having a legal duty to prevent the commission of the offense, fails to make proper effort to do so[.]

*213In the Model Penal Code, this provision is immediately followed by § 2.06(4), a section which addresses the legal issue at the heart of this appeal: the culpable mental state required to establish a person’s complicity in an offense involving a particular’ prohibited result. Section 2.06(4) reads:

When causing a particular result is an element of an offense, an accomplice in the conduct causing [that] result is an accomplice in the commission of that offense if he acts with the kind of culpability, if any, with respect to that result that is sufficient for the commission of the offense.

Professor LaFave discusses these two sections of the Model Penal Code in § 6.7(e) of his treatise on criminal law, but his discussion is — uncharacteristically—illogical. La-Fave begins his discussion by raising the issue of whether the owner of a car can be held accountable as an accomplice to involuntary manslaughter if the owner knowingly permits an intoxicated driver to use the car, and the intoxicated driver kills someone. Professor LaFave acknowledges that courts have often upheld convictions in these and other related circumstances:

[I]t has been held with some frequency that accomplice liability [for involuntary manslaughter] exists under [these] circumstances[.] The most common case [involves] the example given above[, in which] a car owner has permitted a person known to be intoxicated to operate his vehicle, but the same result has been reached on quite different facts.

LaFave & Scott, § 6.7(e), Vol. 2, pp. 149-150. The author then offers a footnote that cites cases in which defendants were held liable as accomplices to manslaughter for purposely assisting people who were engaged in other life-threatening activities. He then offers a rationale for these court decisions:

[T]he assumption [of these cases] apparently is that giving assistance or encouragement to [some]one [who] it is known will thereby engage in conduct dangerous to life should suffice for accomplice liability as to crimes defined in terms of recklessness or negligence. This conclusion [is] permitted under some accomplice liability statutes[.]

Id. In the footnote that accompanies this text, Professor LaFave cites § 2.06(4) of the Model Penal Code as a statute that would impose accomplice liability in this situation. He quotes the Commentary to § 2.06(4), which states that this section codifies the rule that a person “who urges a driver to increase his speed [to an unsafe level] stands in the same position as the driver if a homicide or injury occurs”. Id., n. 110.

Then Professor LaFave makes an illogical statement:

This theory of accomplice liability ... would seem inapplicable under many of the modern accomplice statutes [that follow Model Penal Code § 2.06(3) by] requiring an actual intent to assist the commission of a crime.

Id., pp. 150-51.

This statement is illogical because it appears to be premised on the idea that Model Penal Code § 2.06(3) and Model Penal Code § 2.06(4) codify contradictory rules of accomplice liability. But the Model Penal Code was drafted as a unified whole, not as a menu of alternative formulations of the law. The drafters of the Model Penal Code obviously thought that § 2.06(3) was harmonious with § 2.06(4).

The explanatory note to Model Penal Code § 2.06 states that subsection (4) “deals with a special case that arises when an actor is an accomplice in conduct within the meaning of [§ 2.06(3)], and when a criminal result — anticipated or unanticipated — flows from that conduct.”19 In fact, the Model Penal Code commentary explains that §§ 2.06(3) and 2.06(4) were intended to be read together: § 2.06(3) defines the conduct for which an accomplice can be held accountable, while § 2.06(4) clarifies that, when that conduct produces a result prohibited by law, the accomplice’s culpable mental state with respect to that result (and, thus, the accomplice’s guilt or innocence, or the accomplice’s degree of guilt) must be evaluated separately from anyone else’s culpable mental state.

*214One of the primary aims of the Model Penal Code’s approach to accomplice liability was to leave behind the common-law concepts of principals and accessories, and to have a person’s criminal liability rest on conduct — either conduct that they performed personally or conduct of another person for which they can be held accountable under the various complicity provisions of § 2.06.20

In conformity with this approach, the commentary to § 2.06(3) explains that the language requiring an accomplice to act “with the purpose of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense” actually refers to the accomplice’s “conscious objective [of] bringing about ... conduct that the Code has declared to be criminal”.21 According to this commentary, an accomplice “must have the purpose to promote or facilitate the particular conduct that forms the basis of the charge.”22 (As we explain below, this is generally how the phrase has been interpreted in those states that have adopted the Model Penal Code formulation of complicity.)

The sibling provision, § 2.06(4), was designed to clarify the scope of accomplice liability that might otherwise follow from § 2.06(3). Rejecting the notion that an accomplice should be held accountable for any and all objectively foreseeable results of the principal’s conduct23, the drafters of the Model Penal Code codified the rule that even though several defendants are accountable for the same criminal conduct under § 2.06(3), each defendant’s level of culpability with respect to the results of that conduct must be assessed separately, based on each individual’s culpable mental state:

Subsection (4) makes it clear that complicity in conduct causing a particular criminal result entails accountability for that result so long as the accomplice is personally culpable with respect to the re-suit to the extent demanded by the definition of the crime. Thus, if the accomplice recklessly endangers life by rendering assistance to another, he can be convicted of manslaughter if death results, even though the principal actor’s liability is at a different level. In effect, ... the homicidal act is attributed to both participants, with the liability of each [participant] measured by his own degree of culpability toward the result.

Model Penal Code, Comment to § 2.06(4), p. 321. In an accompanying footnote (footnote 70), the Comment explains that a defendant’s complicity in an unintended homicide would not require proof of intent to kill, but rather proof that the defendant acted with the culpable mental state required for the underlying crime:

A manslaughter prosecution could be brought on the theory that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death would result from the assisted conduct ... [or a] murder prosecution could be brought on the theory that the defendant was ... reckless under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.

When we examine court decisions from states that have complicity statutes modeled after § 2.06(3) of the Model Penal Code (statutes requiring that an accomplice act with the “intent” or the “purpose” of promoting or facilitating the offense) 24 , we find that the great majority have rejected Professor LaFave’s suggestion that this phrase precludes accomplice liability unless the government proves that the defendant intended to cause the prohibited result. Instead, these states have interpreted their statutes in conformity with the Model Penal Code commentary.

*215In particular, with respect to offenses that involve a resulting injury or death, these courts hold that accomplice liability requires proof (1) that the accomplice intended to promote or facilitate another’s unlawful or dangerous conduct, and (2) that the accomplice acted with the culpable mental state specified in the underlying statute with respect to the resulting injury or death. Thus, these courts uphold accomplices’ convictions for unintended criminal homicides — e.g., “extreme indifference” murder or reckless manslaughter — based on proof that the accomplice, acting with the culpable mental state required for the underlying crime, purposely encouraged or aided another person to engage in conduct that posed a substantial and unjustifiable danger to human life.

For example, the Alabama case of Ex Parte Simmons, 649 So.2d 1282 (Ala.1994), involved a fact situation quite similar to the facts of Riley’s case. The defendant, Simmons, was one of a group of men who recklessly fired weapons toward a crowd of people. A three-year-old child was struck by a bullet and killed. The State’s expert witness testified that the fatal bullet “could have been fired from. any of the revolvers and semi-automatic pistols that were used in the shoot-out”. That is, “it could not be determined ... which of the men fired the fatal shot.”25

Because the government could not prove which of the men fired the fatal shot, the government prosecuted Simmons for “reckless murder” under a theory of accomplice liability. (The Alabama crime of “reckless murder” is the equivalent of second-degree murder under AS 11.41.110(a)(3): that is, Simmons was convicted of killing another person while engaged in conduct “manifesting extreme indifference to human life”.)26 The government’s theory was that Simmons purposely encouraged or aided the reckless conduct that resulted in the death of the child.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Simmons’s conviction; see Simmons v. State, 649 So.2d 1279 (Ala.Crim.App. 1992). Essentially, the appeals court adopted the same reasoning that this Court adopted in Echols: a person can not “intend[ ] to promote or assist the commission of reckless conduct”.27 But the Alabama Supreme Court disagreed and reinstated Simmons’s murder conviction:

Accomplice liability does not require that the accomplice intend for the principal to act in a reckless manner. Rather, accomplice liability requires only that the accomplice intend to promote or to assist the principal, having knowledge that the principal is engaging in, or is about to engage in, criminal conduct. See [Alabama Statute] § 13A-2-23, Committee Comments. The mental state required for complicity is the intent to aid the principal in the criminal act or conduct, not the intent of the principal that death occur either intentionally or recklessly. In other words, for a person to be guilty of reckless murder as an accomplice, he need not know or decide whether the principal will act intentionally or recklessly; rather, the accomplice need only have knowledge that the principal is engaging in reckless conduct and intentionally assist or encourage that conduct with the intent to promote or facilitate its commission.

Ex Parte Simmons, 649 So.2d 1282, 1284-85 (Ala.1994) (citations omitted).

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reached the same result on analogous facts in Mendez v. State, 575 S.W.2d 36 (Tex.Crim.App.1979). In Mendez, the defendant and two friends went drinking, armed themselves, and fired several shots at two cars. Then one of the defendant’s companions began shooting randomly at houses. One of these shots killed a home owner who was asleep in bed. The Texas court held that the defendant was properly convicted of involuntary manslaughter under a complicity theory because the defendant “intentionally solicit[ed] or assisted] an individual in committing a reckless act.” Id. at 38.

In People v. Novy, 232 Ill.App.3d 631, 173 Ill.Dec. 565, 597 N.E.2d 273 (1992), the court *216construed its Model Penal Code-based complicity statute to allow the defendant’s conviction for reckless murder based on facts somewhat analogous to the facts of 'Echols. The court stated:

It need not be shown that the defendant had a specific intent to kill or participated in a preconceived plan to commit murder. Where there is a common design to participate in an illegal act, such as aggravated battery to a child, and death occurs during the prosecution of the common objective, all participants are guilty of murder. Such a common design can be inferred from the circumstances surrounding the perpetration of the unlawful conduct such as: presence at the scene of the crime without disapproval or opposition; a continued close association with the perpetrator after the criminal act; a failure to report the incident to the authorities; and/or the subsequent concealing or destroying of evidence of the crime.... The defendant’s acts need only have contributed to the death, and the defendant may be accountable even though he had no intent to and did not personally kill the victim.

In the instant case, even if it is assumed that defendant did not inflict the fatal blows on James, she admitted that she did hit James in the head, beat him with a belt, and inflicted other forms of abuse on him. Furthermore, she was aware of the severity of the beatings inflicted on James by Keith Novy. She told the police on December 2, 1989 that just two weeks before James’ death, Keith struck the two children’s heads together so hard that defendant heard it in the kitchen. It was after this that James began to show signs of severe head injury. Defendant was also aware that Keith had at least threatened James with a baseball bat, and it is not an unreasonable inference from all the evidence that Keith hit James in the head with the bat and defendant knew this. Defendant was well aware of the severity of James’ injuries. Despite this, defendant continued to associate with Keith Novy, she did not inform the authorities of the batteries upon James, despite numerous opportunities to do so, and she even concealed the evidence of the offense by making excuses for James’ injuries and absences. We think that the evidence is sufficient to support a finding of a common design to batter the victim and that a [reckless murder] conviction based upon a theory of accountability is supported by the evidence.

Novy, 173 Ill.Dec. 565, 597 N.E.2d at 295-96.

Similarly, in People v. Taylor, 199 Ill.App.3d 933, 145 Ill.Dec. 938, 557 N.E.2d 917 (1990), the court upheld the defendant’s conviction for involuntary murder based on evidence that she purposely assisted two other men in their planned assault on the victim. The court said: “Although it is not clear whether the defendant intended for Taylor and Brazelton to kill Boldin, it is clear that she played an integral part in the plan by delivering him to the perpetrators knowing that some harm would come to him. This, we believe, is all that is necessary for making her legally responsible for the acts of Taylor and Brazelton.”28 Another Illinois appeals court reached the same result in People v. Cole, 253 Ill.App.3d 603, 192 Ill.Dec. 661, 625 N.E.2d 816, 820-21 (1993) (holding that the defendant was properly convicted of involuntary murder when he acted to further an assault on the victim, from which the victim died).

In Hooks v. State, 416 A.2d 189 (Del.1980), the Delaware Supreme Court held that the defendant was properly convicted of first-degree murder (reckless murder in the commission of a felony) based on evidence that the defendant purposely participated in the underlying felony and acted with recklessness regarding the possibility that someone might die. The court declared that, under Delaware’s complicity statute (based on the Model Penal Code), accomplice liability did not depend on “whether each accomplice had the specific intent to commit murder”, but whether the accomplice “intended to promote or facilitate the principal’s conduct constituting the offense. The defendants did not have *217to specifically intend that the result, a killing, should occur.”29

The Hooks court construed its complicity statute in this manner because the court concluded that the Delaware legislature had intended to codify the pre-existing law of complicity and because, under both the common law and prior Delaware law, accomplices “did not have to specifically intend ... the result”.30

In People v. Wheeler, 772 P.2d 101 (Colo.1989), the Colorado Supreme Court reached the same interpretation of its Model Penal Code-based complicity statute. The court upheld the defendant’s conviction as an accomplice to criminally negligent homicide, over the defendant’s objection that a person can not- “intend” an unintentional killing. The court explained that the language of the complicity statute, “intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense”, means that an accomplice must act with

intent to promote or facilitate the act or conduct of the principal. This language does not require that the [accomplice] intend for the principal to cause death.

Wheeler, 772 P.2d at 103. The court reaffirmed this interpretation of the complicity statute in Bogdanov v. People, 941 P.2d 247 (Colo.1997):

The principle we enunciated in Wheeler is that when [an accomplice] intentionally assists or encourages another whom the [accomplice] knows will thereby engage in conduct that grossly deviates from the standard of reasonable care and poses a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death to another, such a mental state should suffice for complicity liability for an underlying crime defined by the culpable mental states of recklessness or negligence.

Bogdanov, 941 P.2d at 251.

Accord, State v. Locke, 144 N.H. 348, 761 A.2d 376, 379 (1999) (holding that a defendant who purposely aided a friend in beating another man was properly convicted as an accomplice to “extreme indifference” murder when the victim died); State v. Goodall, 407 A.2d 268, 278 (Maine 1979) (holding that a defendant who intentionally participated in an assault was properly convicted as an accomplice to manslaughter when another assailant caused the victim’s death); Commonwealth v. Bridges, 475 Pa. 535, 381 A.2d 125, 128 (1977) (upholding the defendant’s conviction for reckless murder when the defendant participated in a group attack on the victim; during the assault, one of the other assailants drew a knife and stabbed the victim, and the victim later died from this wound).

(d) Based on the foregoing, we conclude that Echols was wrongly decided

Alaska’s complicity statute, AS 11.16.110(2), is based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(3). It specifies that a person can be held accountable for the conduct of another if the person (1) solicits that conduct, encourages the conduct, or assists in planning or performing the conduct, and (2) when doing so, the person acts “with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense”. The task facing this Court in Echols was to interpret what the drafters of Alaska’s Criminal Code meant by “the offense”. Do these words refer to the accomplice’s intent to promote or facilitate the other person’s conduct? Or do these words refer to the accomplice’s intent to promote or facilitate the other person’s conduct and ensuing result? We ultimately adopted the latter interpretation in Echols — concluding that whenever the elements of an offense include a particular result, a person can not be convicted as an accomplice to that offense unless they consciously intended to achieve that result.31 Our decision in Echols rests on two foundations.

First, we acknowledged that the drafters of AS 11.16.110(2) intended to codify Alaska’s pre-existing law on this subject.32 To ascertain that pre-existing law, we examined two pre-code decisions of the Alaska Supreme Court: Hensel v. State, 604 P.2d 222 (Alaska 1979), and Tarnef v. State, 512 P.2d 923 (Alaska 1973). We concluded that these two *218decisions stood for the principle that, to establish complicity in a crime requiring proof of a particular result, the government must prove that the accomplice intended to further or achieve the result specified in the underlying criminal statute. But we misread these two cases.

Hensel is not relevant to the issue presented in Echols. Instead, Hensel dealt with a different aspect of complicity: the problem of whether a person can be held liable as an accomplice if they furnish money, tools, supplies, or other physical aid to another person, knowing that this other person intends to use these things in criminal activity, but without intent to promote or facilitate that criminal activity. . As already discussed in this opinion, the common-law courts were divided on this issue, with the majority holding that knowledge was not enough, and that intent to promote the criminal activity was required.

In Hensel, the supreme court adopted the majority common-law rule, holding that knowledge of the other person’s planned criminal activity is not enough to establish complicity — that an accomplice “must also have had the specific criminal intent to bring about the illegal end”.33 But, in context, the supreme court was only clarifying that the government must prove that the supplier of aid acted with the intent to promote the success of the criminal venture. The supreme court declared that its purpose was to have Alaska adhere to “the generally accepted rule” concerning the furnishing of aid to those who are known to be engaged in criminal conduct.34

In other words, Hensel’s language about “intent to bring about [an] illegal end” was not addressed to the issue presented in Echols — the issue of whether a defendant who assists or encourages illegal conduct, and intends to promote or facilitate that illegal conduct, can be convicted of a crime based on the unintended results of that conduct if the State proves that the defendant acted with the culpable mental state specified in the statute defining the crime. In fact, the supreme court said in footnote 48 of Hensel that it was leaving this issue open:

We need not reach the issue of whether in some cases a less specific criminal intent would suffice — for example, whether a defendant who furnished a weapon to aid in a robbery could be found guilty if the weapon were used to murder rather than to rob the intended victim. We also need not decide whether a defendant who furnishes a weapon with the intent that it be used for criminal purposes, but without knowledge as to the particular crime to be perpetrated, could be found guilty as an accomplice.

Hensel, 604 P.2d at 234 n. 48.

This leaves Tamef. Tamef states that “[i]t is well established at common law and in Alaska that a person cannot be convicted of ‘aiding and abetting’ a crime unless it is shown that he had the specific criminal intent to bring about the illegal end.”35 In Echols, we focused on the phrase, “intent to bring about the illegal end”. We interpreted this phrase to mean that, under the common law and the pre 1980 law of Alaska, a person could not be convicted as an accomplice to a crime requiring proof of a particular result unless the person acted with the intent to promote or facilitate the achievement of that “end” or result. But, on closer inspection, this isolated phrase from Tamef does not stand for this proposition.

The defendant in Tamef was accused of complicity in second-degree arson under Alaska’s former criminal code. This crime was defined as willfully and maliciously setting fire to a structure. (See former AS 11.20.020, quoted in Tamef, 512 P.2d at 927.) That is, the crime was defined solely in terms of conduct; it did not require proof of any result. Thus, when the supreme court required proof of the defendant’s “specific criminal intent to bring about the illegal end”, they were talking about Tamef s intent to aid or encourage someone else’s conduct— the act of setting fire to a building.

*219In fact, another portion of the Tamef decision contains a more accurate description of the complicity rule. This description appears on the next page of the opinion, when the supreme court announces its holding that Alaska’s complicity statute will be construed to incorporate the common-law requirement of criminal intent:

It is clear that at common law criminal intent was a necessary element of liability as an aider and abettor, [footnote 7] Although Alaska now treats aiders and abettors as principals, the common law intent requirement remains. Accordingly, we hold that although intent is not specifically mentioned in the portion of the second degree arson statute which refers to one who “aids, counsels or procures the burning of a building”, criminal intent is required as a necessary element of the crime.

Tamef, 512 P.2d at 929 (footnote 8 omitted).

One of the footnotes that accompanies this text — footnote 7 — is crucial to understanding what the supreme court meant when it declared that Alaska would continue to apply the common law rule that “criminal intent [is] a necessary element of [accomplice] liability”. This footnote is quite short; it reads: “E.g., Peats v. State, 213 Ind. 560, 12 N.E.2d 270, 277 (Ind.1938)”. But the Alaska Supreme Court’s approving citation of Peats demonstrates that Tamef does not stand for the rule of law that we adopted in Echols.

The defendant in Peats was convicted of manslaughter based on evidence that he either encouraged or perhaps personally aided a group of other men who committed an unlawful assault on the victim. The assailants chased the victim’s truck down the highway, overtook and passed it, then turned around and raced back. Approaching the victim’s truck at 70 miles per hour, the assailants threw rocks and pieces of concrete at the truck. The victim lost control of his vehicle and crashed, suffering injuries that ultimately proved fatal.36

The defendant in Peats argued that even if he encouraged or assisted the unlawful attack on the victim, he still could not be convicted of manslaughter because “there can be no aiders or abettors in the crime of involuntary manslaughter”. The defendant asserted that “when a person is [unintentionally] killed in the commission of an unlawful act, only the one actually perpetrating the [homicide] can be guilty”.37 But the Indiana Supreme Court rejected this view of the law and held that Peats’s purposeful encouragement of, or participation in, the unlawful assault was sufficient to establish his complicity in the resulting homicide:

[The assailants shared a] common design or purpose to commit the unlawful assault and battery, and the one who [actually accomplished the killing] had no more purpose and design of killing than the others when they entered together upon the common undertaking, the assault and battery. The purpose of each was the purpose of all, and the act of each, in pursuance of the common design, was the act of all. The one who actually accomplished the killing intended only the assault and battery, and those who assisted in the assault and battery intended it as much as he. Guilt of involuntary manslaughter is predicated upon the intentional doing of the unlawful act, and not upon intention to kill.

Peats, 12 N.E.2d at 277.

Given the holding in Peats, and given the Alaska Supreme Court’s approving citation of Peats in footnote 7 of Tamef, it is clear that we misinterpreted Tamef (and the pre-exist-ing law of Alaska) in Echols. Tamef reiterates the well-established common law rule that, even though a person may have assisted or encouraged a criminal act, they can not be held liable as an accomplice unless they did so with criminal intent. That is, an accomplice must intend to promote the “illegal end” — if that phrase is understood to mean the intended unlawful conduct, such as the unlawful burning in Tamef or the assault in Peats. But, as illustrated by the decision in Peats, when the charged crime rests on proof of unlawful or dangerous conduct followed by an unintended result (such as injury or death), there is no common-law requirement *220that an accomplice subjectively intend to cause this result.

Thus, the first basis for our decision in Echols — our conclusion that Alaska’s pre-code law required proof of an accomplice’s subjective intent to promote or facilitate a particular result — is erroneous.

The second basis for our decision in Echols was our adoption of Professor LaFave’s suggestion that complicity statutes based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(3) are intended to prohibit accomplice liability for any crime involving a particular result unless the government proves that the accomplice acted “intentionally” with respect to that result.

But as we have already discussed, this suggestion is contradicted by the pertinent Model Penal Code commentary, and it has been rejected by most courts with Model Penal Code-based complicity statutes. The standard interpretation of the phrase “intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense” is that it requires proof of the accomplice’s intent to promote or facilitate another person’s conduct that constitutes the actus reus of the offense. With regard to the results of that conduct, the government must prove that the accomplice had whatever culpable mental state is required for the underlying crime.

It is true, as we pointed out in Echols, that our criminal code contains a provision, AS 11.16.110, based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(3), but it does not contain a provision based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(4) — no provision expressly providing that, when a statute requires proof of a particular result and specifies an accompanying culpable mental state, the government must prove that an accomplice acted with that culpable mental state. In Echols, we took this omission to mean that the drafters of Alaska’s criminal code disagreed with the principle of Model Penal Code § 2.06(4), and that they wanted to require a higher culpable mental state— “intentionally” — whenever a defendant was prosecuted under a complicity theory.38

But this reasoning rests on the same illogical premise that we described previously — ■ the premise that Model Penal Code § 2.06(3) and Model Penal Code § 2.06(4) are fundamentally at odds, each embodying a different rule of accomplice liability. As the Model Penal Code commentary explains, this is not the case. The two sections were intended to complement each other: subsection (3) describes the circumstances in which one person can be held accountable for another person’s conduct, and subsection (4) explains that, even though two or more people may be accountable for the conduct constituting an offense, each person’s culpable mental state must be evaluated separately.

Although the drafters of our criminal code did not explain why they did not codify Model Penal Code § 2.06(4), it does not make sense to interpret their decision as an indication that they wanted to restrict accomplice liability to instances where the accomplice acted “intentionally” with respect to a result. First, the drafters expressly stated that they intended AS 11.16.110(2) to codify Alaska’s pre-existing law on this subject, and — as we have just explained — no such rule is found in Alaska’s pre-code decisions. Second, the Model Penal Code commentary clearly states that §§ 2.06(3)-(4) were intended to authorize accomplice-liability convictions for crimes such as second-degree murder or manslaughter upon proof that (1) the accomplice intentionally promoted or facilitated another person’s dangerous conduct, (2) an unintended death resulted, and (3) the accomplice acted with the culpable mental state required for the underlying crime. If the drafters of our criminal code had intended to discard this basic principle of the Model Penal Code’s section on accomplice liability, one would expect the di'afters to have flagged this change instead of remaining silent.

It now appears to us more likely that the drafters of Alaska’s code failed to include a provision based on Model Penal Code § 2.06(4) because they considered it superfluous. As explained above, the drafters of the Model Penal Code rejected the common-law decisions that accomplices should automatically be held accountable for any and all objectively foreseeable consequences of a joint unlawful endeavor. Rather, the Model *221Penal Code’s primary philosophical position was that any defendant’s culpability should be assessed separately, based on (1) their conduct (either their own personal conduct or the conduct of another for which they were accountable) and (2) their personal culpable mental state(s).

Under Model Penal Code § 2.06(3) — and under AS 11.16.110(2) — a person can be held accountable for conduct performed by another person. But no provision of the Model Penal Code imposes vicarious liability for the culpable mental state of another; each person’s culpable mental state is evaluated individually. Thus, the drafters of Alaska’s code could conclude that, even in the absence of a statutory provision expressly requiring individual assessment of each accomplice’s culpable mental state, individual assessment would be the default rule.

This was, in fact, the common-law rule with respect to the participants in a criminal homicide. Take, for instance, the situation where two defendants are jointly accountable for a criminal homicide — one because he personally struck the fatal blow or inflicted the fatal wound, and the other under a theory of complicity because he encouraged or assisted the homicidal act. If one of the defendants acted in cold blood (i.e., with malice aforethought) while the other acted in the heat of passion, the one who acted with malice would be guilty of murder and the one who acted in the heat of passion would be guilty only of manslaughter. This was true regardless of which defendant was the perpetrator and which the accomplice. See Perkins & Boyce, pp. 753, 757; LaFave & Scott, § 6.7(c), Vol. 2, pp. 14445.

In conclusion: The Model Penal Code was written to impose accomplice liability for crimes involving unintended injury or death if the accomplice intentionally promotes or facilitates the conduct that produces the injury or death, even though the accomplice did not intend this result. Among the states that have complicity statutes based on the Model Penal Code, most courts have interpreted their statutes this way. The reasons that we gave in Echols for interpreting AS 11.16.110(2) differently do not withstand analysis. Accordingly, we now overrule our decision in Echols. When AS 11.16.110(2) speaks of a person’s “intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the offense”, this phrase means that the accomplice must act with the intent to promote or facilitate the conduct that constitutes the actus reus of the offense. With respect to offenses that require proof of a particular result, the government must prove that the accomplice acted with the culpable mental state that applies to that result, as specified in the underlying statute.

Thus, Riley could properly be convicted of first-degree assault under AS 11.41.200(a)(1) either upon proof that he personally shot a firearm into the crowd or (alternatively) upon proof that, acting with intent to promote or facilitate Portalla’s act of shooting into the crowd, Riley solicited, encouraged, or assisted Portalla to do so. These are alternative ways of proving that Riley was accountable for the conduct that inflicted the injuries. The government was also obliged to prove that Riley acted with the culpable mental state specified by the first-degree assault statute. But regardless of whether Riley acted as a principal or an accomplice, the applicable culpable mental state remained the same: recklessness as to the possibility that this conduct would cause serious physical injury.39

Because Riley’s jury was instructed in accordance with Echols, they were asked to decide whether the State met a higher burden: proof that Riley intended to inflict serious physical injury. The jury’s verdict that Riley acted intentionally with respect to this result is sufficient to establish Riley’s guilt under the true standard, “recklessly”. See AS 11.81.610(c): “If recklessly suffices to establish an element, that element also is established if a person acts intentionally or knowingly.”

For these reasons, we affirm Riley’s two convictions for first-degree assault.

Riley’s sentence appeal

*222First-degree assault is a class A felony.40 As a first felony offender, Riley faced a 5-year presumptive term on each of the two counts of first-degree assault, with a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment on each count.41 For the two counts of first-degree assault and the six counts of third-degree assault, Riley was sentenced to a composite term of 16 years’ imprisonment with 6 years suspended — 10 years to serve.

Superior Court Judge Niesje J. Steinkruger found that the State had proved three aggravating factors under AS 12.65.155(c): (c)(10) — that Riley’s conduct was among the most serious within the definition of first-degree assault; (c)(6) — that Riley’s conduct created a risk of injury to three or more persons; and (c)(9) — that Riley knew that the offense involved more than one victim. Judge Steinkruger also found that Riley showed no remorse, was unwilling to accept any blame for his conduct, and lacked insight into his own behavior. She concluded that the need to isolate Riley to protect the public was “extremely high”.

In addition to sentencing Riley to serve 10 years in prison, Judge Steinkruger exercised her authority under AS 12.55.115 and ordered that Riley not be eligible for discretionary parole during this 10-year term. She imposed this parole restriction based on her finding that Riley was “an extremely dangerous offender” who, because of his lack of insight and lack of remorse, was unlikely to be rehabilitated before the end of his 10-year term.

Riley contends that his 10-year prison term is excessive. His primary argument is that he was penalized for insisting on a trial. By this, Riley means that his sentence is greater than the sentence that his co-defendant Portalla will likely receive. Portalla entered into a plea bargain with the State, agreeing to plead no contest to a single count of first-degree assault and further agreeing to testify against Riley at his trial.

The fact that Portalla may receive a lesser sentence than Riley does not suggest an unjustified sentencing disparity. One obvious justification for the disparate sentences is that Portalla admitted his participation in the assault when he was first questioned by the state troopers, he assisted the troopers in their investigation, and he ultimately agreed to testify for the State — for which he was allowed to plead no contest to a single count of first-degree assault.

In his brief to this Court, Riley asserts that the jury found that Portalla was the one who fired the shots that wounded the two victims. Riley infers this from the fact that the jury found him guilty under a complicity theory. But, as the State points out, the jury’s verdict shows only that the jurors could not decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, which man fired the wounding shots — leaving them no alternative but to decide Riley’s guilt or innocence under the more stringent requirements of a complicity theory.

Judge Steinkruger’s findings at sentencing offer another justification for the disparate sentences. Judge Steinkruger found that Riley, who was 30 years old, was the “leader” in the criminal conduct. (Portalla was 18 years old.) Judge Steinkruger further found that it was Riley’s idea to “stalk[ ] a group of young people who were socializing on a summer evening by the river”.

As this Court noted in Sam v. State, “incidents of unexplained and unprovoked violence may indicate that an offender is seriously disturbed and unusually dangerous. For this reason[,] such conduct may justify the imposition of an exceptionally severe sentence, even for a first offender.” 842 P.2d 596, 603 (Alaska App.1992).

For these reasons, we conclude that Riley’s 10 year prison term is not clearly mistaken.42

Riley also contends that Judge Stein-kruger did not actually exercise her authority under AS 12.55.115 to restrict his parole eligibility. He asserts that Judge Steinkrug*223er merely declared that both of his first-degree assault sentences were “presumptive sentences”. Riley suggests that the judge may have thought that this was sufficient to restrict his parole eligibility for the entire 10-year term, but she was mistaken.

The record does not support Riley’s argument. Although Judge Steinkruger never expressly referred to AS 12.55.115, her remarks concerning parole eligibility clearly show that she was exercising her statutory authority to deny Riley discretionary parole during his 10-year prison term:

The Court: [I find] that the defendant is an extremely dangerous offender, shooting into an unarmed crowd.... [B]ased upon the defendant’s attitude, ... it [is] unlikely that rehabilitation will occur in less than the full time to serve, as the defendant is without remorse and significant ... insight, and [because he] continues to blame others. I find [his] level of dangerousness to be such that the public needs protection [from him] for the entire term of the sentence, and thus parole eligibility is restricted for the 10 years.

Finally, Riley challenges Judge Stein-kruger’s decision to order Riley to pay restitution to one of the shooting victims for the cost of an airplane ticket home. At the time of the assault, this victim was a member of the military, stationed in Fairbanks. Because of the shooting, and because of resulting post-traumatic stress, he was unable to continue to perform his duties. The Army granted him compassionate leave and allowed him to return home to his parents’ residence in Ohio to recover.

Alaska Statute 12.55.045 specifically authorizes restitution for “counseling, medical, or shelter services” provided to the “victim or other person injured by the offense”. Riley contends that reimbursement for a plane ticket home is beyond the scope of this statutory authorization.

However, in Reece v. State, 881 P.2d 1135 (Alaska App.1994), this Court upheld an award of restitution for partial moving expenses incurred by the mother of an eight-year-old sexual abuse victim. We reasoned that the move was “prompted by the sexual abuse for which [the defendant] was convicted and that the location [the mother] chose for a new residence was reasonable.” Id. at 1138.

The record contains sufficient justification for the victim’s move to his parents’ residence to recuperate from his injuries. Judge Steinkruger could reasonably conclude that this expense was attributable to Riley’s crime and was reimbursable under the statute.

Conclusion

For the reasons explained here, our decision in Echols is OVERRULED, and Riley’s conviction and sentence are AFFIRMED.

Orth, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

With the common law of England, to which the inhabitants of Maryland are constitutionally entitled, Md. Const., Dec. of Rights, Art. 5, came the doctrine of accessoryship applicable to felonies. Although the common law may be changed by legislative act1 or judicial decision,2 the doctrine has not been altered in this jurisdiction. Maryland is one of the few, if not the only state, which has retained this doctrine in virtually the same form as it existed at the time of William Blackstone in the 18th century, and it represents the law of Maryland at the present time.3 State v. Williamson, 282 Md. 100, 111, 382 A. 2d 588 (1978) (concurring opinion by Levine, J.).

*192Accompanying the common law doctrine across the Atlantic were certain highly technical procedural rules, not altogether logical, which had developed from the distinction between principals and accessories before the fact. These rules operate to the advantage of the accused and the detriment of the prosecution, for they “tended to shield accessories from punishment notwithstanding overwhelming evidence of their criminal assistance.” W. La Fave & A. Scott, Handbook on Criminal Law § 63, pp. 498-499 (hereinafter referred to as La Fave & Scott). The rules are frequently procedural embarrassments to the State, see State v. Magliano, 7 Md. App. 286, 255 A. 2d 470 (1969), and the case at hand furnishes yet another example. It concerns the application of the common law doctrine of accessoryship to the crime of murder, and the procedural embarrassments to. the State are compounded by the statutory classification in Maryland of murder into degrees, which was unknown at the English common law.

I

The ultimate question on this appeal is whether the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County erred in dismissing an indictment returned against James Edward Ward,4 Harry Edward Brockman and David Victor Maness were charged with the premeditated murder of Gerald Joseph Godbout, Jr. on 28 April 1972, and were tried in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County. Each pleaded guilty to and was convicted of the murder in the second degree under a plea bargain arrangement.5 Maryland Rule 731 e, formerly Rule 724. On *19317 July 1974 Ward was indicted for various offenses relating to the murder. At the time of the dismissal of the indictment on 11 April 1978, only the third count remained.6 It charged Ward as an accessory before the fact of the murder of Godbout, alleged to have been committed by Brockman and Maness “feloniously, wilfully and of their deliberately premeditated malice aforethought.” It presented that Ward “did unlawfully aid, counsel and procure the said ... Brockman and ... Maness to do and commit the said murder----”

The indictment was dismissed upon the grant of a motion filed by Ward claiming that the third count was defective. In light of the allegations in the motion, the arguments made regarding them, and the comments of the court, these questions are presented which go to the determination of *194whether the court erred in dismissing the indictment as defective:

1) May there be an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree?

2) If so, did the form of the third count permit Ward to be tried as an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree?

3) In any event, may Ward be guilty of murder in the first degree as accessory before the fact when his principals stand convicted of murder in the second degree?

II

We lay a foundation for our determination of whether the court erred in dismissing the indictment by examining the relevant terms involved.

Murder

Homicide is the killing of a human being by a human being. It is culpable when it is felonious, and it is felonious when it is not justifiable or excusable. See Clark & Marshall, A Treatise on the Law of Crimes §§ 10.00-10.14 (7th ed. 1967) (hereinafter referred to as Clark & Marshall); L. Hochheimer, Crimes and Criminal Procedure §§ 656-678 (1st ed. 1897) (hereinafter referred to as Hochheimer); R. Perkins, Criminal Law 28-96 (2d ed. 1969) (hereinafter referred to as Perkins).

“In the English common law there was but one crime of felonious homicide (if petit treason is ignored). [7] The division of this into murder and manslaughter resulted from early statutes intended to exclude the *195more heinous types of homicide from benefit of clergy. In its origin this was merely a difference in penalty dependent upon the presence or absence of aggravating circumstances, and no doubt it would have been worded in terms of ‘degrees’ of the crime if that concept had been in use at the time. For most purposes murder and manslaughter have come to be regarded as distinct offenses....” Perkins, Parties to Crime, 89 U. Pa. L. Rev. 581, 587 (1941).

In Maryland, murder and manslaughter are not considered as degrees of felonious homicide, but are regarded as distinct offenses, distinguished by the presence of malice aforethought in murder and the absence of malice in manslaughter. Davis v. State, 39 Md. 355 (1874); Weighorst v. State, 7 Md. 442 (1855).8

At the common law there were no degrees of murder. A conviction of felonious homicide with malice aforethought, that is, murder, called for the sentence of death and was excluded from the benefit of clergy.9 The penalty of death for all acts of murder long ago came to be thought too severe because of the widely different circumstances and varying atrociousness under which one person may feloniously kill another. Ameliorative measures were taken in many states through legislative enactments, generally by dividing murder *196into degrees and relating the punishment to the degree.10 Maryland followed this pattern. Acts 1809, ch. 138, § 3. The preamble to § 3 expressed its object:

“And whereas the several offences which are included under the general denomination of murder, differ so greatly from each other in the degree of their atrociousness, that it is unjust to involve them in the same punishment____” 11

As presently codified, the statute declares that “[a]ll murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or lying in wait, or by any kind of wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing shall be murder in the first degree,” Maryland Code (1957, 1976 Repl. Vol.) art. 27, § 407,12 and “[a]ll other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder in the second degree,” id. § 411.

Principals and Accessories

“In the field of felony the common law divided guilty parties into principals and accessories.” Perkins at 643. Principals came to be classified as in the first degree (perpetrators) or in the second degree (abettors) and accessories as before the fact (inciters) or after the fact (criminal protectors).13

*197A principal in the first degree is one who actually commits a crime, either by his own hand, or by an inanimate agency, or by an innocent human agent. A principal in the second degree is one who is guilty of felony by reason of having aided, counseled, commanded or encouraged the commission thereof in his presence, either actual or constructive. An accessory before the fact is one who is guilty of felony by reason of having aided, counseled, commanded or encouraged the commission thereof, without having been present either actually or constructively at the moment of perpetration. An accessory after the fact is one who, with knowledge of the other’s guilt, renders assistance to a felon in the effort to hinder his detection, arrest, trial or punishment. See State v. Williamson, 282 Md. 103-105; Camphor v. State, 233 Md. 203, 205, 196 A. 2d 75 (1963); Thornton v. State, 232 Md. 542, 544, 194 A. 2d 617 (1963); Veney v. State, 225 Md. 237, 238, 170 A. 2d 171 (1961); Davis v. State, 38 Md. 15, 45 (1873); Agresti v. State, 2 Md. App. 278, 280, 234 A. 2d 284 (1967); 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *34-38 (hereinafter referred to as Blackstone); Clark & Marshall §§ 8.01-8.03,8.06; Hochheimer §§ 31-36; Perkins at 643-669. For a neat summary of the common law of parties as applied to felonious homicide, see State v. Powell, 168 N. C. 134, 138, 83 S. E. 310 (1914).

Ill

(1)

We receive little assistance from the common law in considering whether there may be an accessory before the *198fact of second degree murder because, as we have indicated, murder was not divided into degrees at the common law. Blackstone asserts in his discussion of what offenses admit of accessories: “In murder and other felonies, there may be accessories: except only in those offences, which by judgment of the law are sudden and unpremeditated, as manslaughter and the like; which therefore cannot have any accessories before the fact.” Blackstone *36. Commentators reject this exception. Perkins characterizes it as “a far-fetched corollary” to the rule that an accessory cannot be tried before his principal. Perkins at 673. 1 P. Wharton, Criminal Law § 680, p. 908 (12th ed. 1932) (hereinafter referred to as Wharton) states flatly: “A person may be legally convicted as accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree.” 1R. Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure § 111, p. 241 (1957) (hereinafter referred to as Anderson) asserts: “There may be accessories before the fact to the crime of murder in different degrees.” This view is thus explained in Wharton:

“It has been doubted whether there can be an accessory before the fact to manslaughter, since accessoryship presupposes premeditation, and premeditation is incompatible with manslaughter. But... an instigator may, in hot blood, stimulate a person incensed with another to execute a deed of vengeance on such other, when the offense of the perpetrator would be only manslaughter; and we may also hold that an instigator may be guilty of murder in instigating another to commit manslaughter by the rash use of dangerous instrumentalities. A fortiori there may be an accessory before the fact to murder in the second degree.” Id. § 272, pp. 361-362 (footnotes omitted).

See G. Williams, Criminal Law § 130 (2nd ed. 1961) (hereinafter referred to as Williams).

The General Assembly has recognized accessoryship of murder in the second degree at least to the extent of providing for punishment upon conviction thereof, but *199without distinction between accessories before and after the fact:

“Every person convicted of the crime of murder in the second degree, or as accessory thereto, shall be sentenced to the penitentiary for not more than thirty years.” Code (1957, 1976 Repl. Yol.) art. 27, § 414 (emphasis added).14

The view that there may be an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree has a rational basis. A person may be guilty of “[c]onduct... accompanied by an intent to do serious bodily injury but without an intent to kill, which legally causes another’s death.” La Fave and Scott, 540. We recognized that such conduct constitutes murder in Davis v. State, 237 Md. 97, 104, 205 A. 2d 254 (1964), cert. denied, 382 U. S. 945 (1965): “An actual intent to take life is not necessary for a conviction of murder if the intent is to commit grievous bodily harm and death occurred in consequence of the attack.” This “intent-to-do-serious-bodily-injury murder” has been traced back to Holloway’s Case, 79 Eng. Rep. 715 (K.B. 1628). The murder in such circumstances is in the second degree. “If the intent were to commit grievous bodily harm, and death occurred in consequence of the attack, then the case would have been murder in the second degree____” Wharton § 841, pp. 1131-1132. The felonious homicide would be with malice aforethought but not wilful, deliberate and premeditated. See Gladden v. State, 273 Md. 383, 387, 330 A. 2d 176 (1974). So, if A shoots B in the leg with the intention of doing him serious bodily harm short of death but the injury thereby done to B results in the death of B, however contrary this may be to A’s intention, A is guilty of murder in the second degree. If C, sharing A’s intention that B be seriously injured but not killed, aided, counseled, commanded or encouraged the shooting, without having been present either *200actually or constructively at the moment of perpetration, he would be guilty as an accessory before the fact to murder in the second degree.

We conclude that there may be an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree.

(2)

Having concluded that there may be an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree, we find that Ward could be tried therefor under the third count of the indictment.

The statute classifying murder into degrees did not require a change in the common law forms of charging the offense. Wood v. State, 191 Md. 658, 667, 62 A. 2d 576 (1948). However, the General Assembly of Maryland relaxed the formal common law requirements of indictment in homicide cases when it enacted Chapter 248 of the Acts of 1906. It authorized the use of a shortened statutory form which may, but need not, be used in lieu of the common law forms. Although there were subsequent amendments to the form because of controversies relative to the death penalty, the only actual change in the formula authorized to be used in an indictment was the requirement added by § 7 of Acts 1963, ch. 558 that an indictment conclude with the words “against the peace, government and dignity of the State.” State v. Williamson, 282 Md. at 109. The validity of the 1906 formula has been upheld by this Court. Kelley v. State, 181 Md. 642, 647, 31 A. 2d 614 (1943); Neusbaum v. State, 156 Md. 149, 161-162, 143 A. 872 (1928).

The murder of which Ward was alleged to have been an accessory before the fact was charged in the third count of the indictment pursuant to the statutory formula, which, we observe, is expressly applicable, not only to murder and manslaughter, but “for being accessory thereto.” It is well settled that under an indictment pursuant to the statutory formula, even though it spells out murder in the first degree, the accused may be convicted of murder in the first degree, of murder in the second degree, or of manslaughter. *201Blackwell v. State, 278 Md. 466, 476, 365 A. 2d 545 (1976), cert. denied, 431 U. S. 918 (1977); State v. Evans, 278 Md. 197, 199, n. 1, 362 A. 2d 629 (1976); Carroll v. Warden, 205 Md. 631, 632-633, 106 A. 2d 71 (1954). This is not out of line with the common law, which never entirely lost sight of the notion that the crime is felonious homicide, of which murder and manslaughter are but different grades. Perkins at 649. Thus, it was said in 1 Hale P. C. *348:

“Upon an indictment of murder, tho the party upon his trial be acquit of the murder, and convict of manslaughter, he shall receive judgment, as if the indictment had been manslaughter, for the offense in substance is the same.”

We find that, under the third count of the indictment, Ward could be tried as an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree.

(3)

We consider now whether a person may be convicted of murder in the first degree as accessory when his principal has been convicted of the murder in the second degree.

At the common law the principal in the second degree may be tried and convicted prior to the trial of the principal in the first degree, or even after the latter has been tried and acquitted. 1 Hale P. C. *437. Furthermore, a principal in the second degree may be convicted of a higher crime or a lower crime than the principal in the first degree. Clark & Marshall § 8.05, p. 521; Perkins at 670-671.15 With respect to accessories, however, the common law took a different path. An accessory cannot be tried, without his consent, before the *202principal.16 State v. Williamson, 282 Md. at 112 (concurring opinion by Levine, J.); Clark & Marshall § 8.05, p. 523; Perkins at 672-673. And an accessory could not be convicted of a higher crime than his principal. Blackstone declares flatly:

“It is a maxim, that accessorius sequitur naturam suiprincipalis: and therefore an accessory cannot be guilty of a higher crime than his principal; being only punished as a partaker of his guilt.” Blackstone at *36.

See Clark & Marshall § 8.03, p. 514; Hochheimer § 38; Perkins at 675; Wharton § 276. The rule that an accessory before the fact may not be convicted of a higher crime than the principal has not been altered by statute or judicial decision in Maryland and is the law of this State at the present time.

In arguing to the trial court that a person could be convicted of murder in the first degree as an accessory, although the principal has been convicted of that murder in the second degree, the State declared that “Wharton says we can do it.” 17 We think that the State misinterpreted Wharton. It is correct that Wharton says:

“The instigator may act in hot blood, in which case he will be guilty only of manslaughter, while the *203perpetrator may act coolly, and thus be guilty of murder. The converse, also, may be true: the instigation may be cool and deliberate, the execution in hot blood by a person whom the instigator finds in a condition of unreasoning frenzy. A person desiring coolly to get rid of an enemy, for instance, may employ as a tool someone whom that enemy has aggrieved, and who is infuriated by his grievance. Hence an accessory before the fact (or, to adopt the terms of recent codes, an instigator) may be guilty of murder, while the principal (or perpetrator) may be guilty of manslaughter; or the accessory before the fact (instigator), acting in hot blood, may be guilty of manslaughter, while the perpetrator (principal), acting with deliberate malice, may be guilty of murder.” Wharton § 276, pp. 363-364.

Immediately preceding this statement, however, is a recognition of the common law rule and a qualification regarding the view expressed:

“Under the old law, the defendant was first convicted, and then the accessory was charged with being accessory to the offense which the conviction covered. But now that instigation is a substantive offense, it must be remembered that the offense of the instigator is not necessarily of the same grade as that of the perpetrator.” Id. § 276, p. 363 (emphasis added).

Before us the State also quotes Williams § 130, pp. 390-391. Professor Williams refers to the rule that a principal in the first degree may be convicted of murder and a principal in the second degree of manslaughter, and asserts: “There is no reason why a similar result should not be reached for accessories before.” Id. § 130, p. 390 (§ 62, p. 210 (1st ed. 1953)). He gives examples whereby an accessory before the fact could be guilty of manslaughter and the principal of murder, and the converse where the guilt of the secondary party is the greater. He concludes: “To put the matter generally, a secondary party can be convicted of a crime of *204a higher degree than the principal.” Id. § 130, p. 391 (§ 62, p. 211 (1st ed. 1953)). But he relies heavily on Wharton, and we are constrained to conclude that his view, like that of Wharton, depends upon the status of the law whereby accessoryship before the fact has been made a substantive offense by statute.

Accessoryship before the fact was not a substantive offense under common law, and there being neither statute nor judicial decision in this jurisdiction making it so, it is not a substantive offense in Maryland. The common law theory of parties was based upon the concept of one crime with guilt attaching to several persons. The application of this theory to murder was well expressed in State v. Ayers, 67 Tenn. 96 (1874):

“The offense is compounded of the connivance of the accessory and the actual killing by the principal felon, and the crime of the accessory, thought inchoate in the act of counseling, hiring or .commanding, is not consummate until the deed is actually done. The law in such case, holds the accessory before the fact to be guilty of the murder itself, not as principal, it is true, but as accessory before the fact, for it is the doing of the deed, and not the counseling, hiring, or commanding that makes his crime complete; and it is for the murder that he is indicted, and not for the counseling and procuring.” Id. at 100.

Thus it is that Hale spoke of “an accessory to murder before the fact,” 1 Hale P.C. *435, rather than “an accessory before the fact to the crime of murder,” or some similar form, as is used under modern statutes which make accessoryship before the fact a separate substantive offense. Perkins at 649. What we perceive to be the basis of the view of Wharton and Williams that an accessory before the fact may be convicted of a higher crime than that of which the principal was convicted simply does not exist in Maryland. There may be no reason why the rule with respect to principals in the first degree and principals in the second degree should not be *205extended to accessories before, as Williams stated, but the plain fact is that Maryland has not yet done so.

The classification of murder into degrees left intact the common law concept of murder as one crime:

“ ‘Murder’ is here recognized as a general denomination, including offenses differing from each other in their degrees of atrocity, but not in their nature or kind; no attempt is made to explain or modify its meaning or abridge its range. Its common law sense is left unimpaired; the measure of punishment only is sought to be graduated according to the circumstances under which it was committed.” Davis v. State, 39 Md. at 374.18

See Gladden v. State, 273 Md. at 389-390; Stansbury v. State, 218 Md. 255, 260, 146 A. 2d 17 (1958); Wood v. State, 191 Md. at 666; Abbott v. State, 188 Md. 310, 312, 52 A. 2d 489 (1947); Hanon v. State, 63 Md. 123, 126 (1885). At first blush, it would seem that since murder is one crime, the rule that an accessory before the fact may not be convicted of a higher crime than his principal would be satisfied when both were convicted of murder, regardless of the degree. But the rule was based on the notion that an accessory should never suffer more punishment than the principal. Perkins at 675. And at the common law, principals and accessories were equally culpable and subject to the same punishment. State v. Williamson, 282 Md. at 106; Agresti v. State, 2 Md. App. at 281; 1 J. Chitty, A Practical Treatise on the Criminal Law *267 (1819). Clark & Marshall states: “At common law an accessory before the fact is liable to the same punishment as the principal.” Id. § 8.05, p. 522. In Maryland, at the time Ward was alleged to have committed the murder as an *206accessory before the fact, the punishment prescribed by statute for “[e]very person convicted of murder in the first degree, his or her aiders, abettors and counsellers,” was death or life imprisonment, in the discretion of the court, except that when a jury in rendering a verdict of murder in the first degree added the words “without capital punishment,” the sentence was to be life imprisonment. Code (1957,1971 Repl. Vol.) art. 27, § 413.19 As we have seen, the punishment upon conviction of murder in the second degree and of being an accessory thereto, was not more than thirty years. Therefore, to be faithful to the rationale of the rule at common law, it must be construed in light of present day circumstances to apply to degrees of murder, so that an accessory before the fact may not be convicted of a higher degree of murder than the principal committing that murder. In the case sub judice, the principals stood validly convicted of murder in the second degree, and Ward may not be convicted of murder in the first degree as an accessory.20 *207Otherwise he would not be equally culpable with the principals and would be liable to greater punishment than that to which they were subjected.

IV

We have found that there may be an accessory before the fact of murder in the second degree, that the third count of the indictment permitted Ward to be convicted of murder in the second degree as an accessory before the fact, but that, as a matter of law, Ward may not be convicted of murder in the first degree as an accessory before the fact. It follows from these findings that the indictment before the court was not defective. Ordinarily, Ward could be properly tried under it, and the court would err in dismissing it. Upon trial under the count, however, Ward would be entitled as a matter of law to a judgment of acquittal of murder in the first degree as accessory.

This case takes still another turn, however, because the procedural questions arising from the common law doctrine of accessoryship were compounded by comments made by the prosecutor at trial. During the argument before the trial court on the motion to dismiss the indictment as defective, the court took the position that the indictment charged Ward only with being an accessory before the fact to murder in the first degree. It said:

“My point is you have charged him with a specific crime of accessory before the fact of premeditated murder and you don’t have principals to premeditated murder so you can’t convict him of accessory before the fact of premeditated murder.”

The State countered by claiming that it was not necessary to have principals convicted of murder in the first degree to try a person as an accessory before the fact to murder in the first degree. The State apparently agreed with the contention of *208the defense that there could not be accessoryship before the fact to murder in the second degree — “it doesn’t make sense.” Whereupon the court asked: “Then how can you try somebody on the indictment... for accessory before the fact of a seeond degree murder, which is what you want to do?” The transcript of the proceedings reads:

“MR. ARNOLD [Assistant State’s Attorney]: No, it isn’t. We are trying him for accessory before the fact of first degree murder, and Wharton says we can do it.

“THE COURT: Even though there is no conviction of first degree murder?

“MR. ARNOLD: That’s correct. That answers it specifically.”

As we have indicated, the State misinterpreted Wharton, and we have concluded that as a matter of law, he could not be tried for murder in the first degree as an accessory. The question is, however, whether, by reason of this expression of how it planned to proceed, the State is also precluded from trying Ward for murder in the second degree as an accessory. We do not think that it is. It is clear that in ruling on the motion the court did not subscribe to the State’s view and did not rely on the State’s statement of what it intended to prove in reaching its decision. Ward was in no way misled. We now have established precise procedures for the entry of a nolle prosequi by our Rules of Procedure. Rule 782, formerly Rule 711. “A defendant may enter a plea of not guilty to one degree and a plea of guilty to another degree of an offense which, by law, may be divided into degrees of guilt.” Rule 731 e, formerly Rule 724, and, likewise, a nolle prosequi may be entered to a degree of an offense. See Hochheimer .§ 209. In the circumstances, we do not deem the State’s statement made during argument to amount to the entering of a nolle prosequi to murder in the second degree as an accessory. Compare Knotts v. State, 237 Md. 417, 207 A. 2d 100 (1965); Williams v. State, 7 Md. App. 241, 254 A. 2d 376 (1969), cert. denied, 256 Md. 749 (1970); Stocker v. State, 4 Md. App. 275, *209242 A. 2d 588 (1968), cert. denied, 251 Md. 752, cert. denied 395 U. S. 982 (1969).

In short, we believe that, in the unique situation in which the State was placed by the procedural embarrassments emanating from the common law doctrine of accessoryship, the position it indicated in arguing the motion to dismiss the indictment should be treated as no more than a statement of how it thought it would proceed at trial if it prevailed in its argument that the motion to dismiss the indictment be denied, rather than an absolute “abandonment” of attempting to prove under the indictment that Ward was guilty of murder in the second degree as an accessory before the fact. In the interests of justice, the State should not be precluded at a trial of Ward under the third count of the indictment from attempting to establish that he was guilty of the murder of Godbout in the second degree as an accessory before the fact.

We reverse the judgment of the trial court and remand the case for trial under the third count of the indictment. At the trial, Ward shall be entitled, as a matter of law, to a judgment of acquittal as to murder in the first degree as accessory before the fact.

Y

The remand of the case for trial of Ward under the third count of the indictment for murder in the second degree as accessory before the fact requires further comment. Acts 1978, ch. 3, §§ 1, 2 repealed former §§ 412, 413 and 414 of art. 27 and enacted new sections in lieu thereof. See footnote 19, supra. Former § 414, as we have indicated, provided that “[e]very person convicted of the crime of murder in the second degree, or as accessory thereto, shall be sentenced to [imprisonment] for not more than thirty years.” The new § 412 (c) provides: “A person found guilty of murder in the second degree shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 30 years.” Unlike the former statute, nothing is said about accessoryship to murder in the second degree. We have seen, however, that in Maryland accessoryship before the fact is not a substantive offense. A person need not be *210specifically charged as an accessory before the fact; he may be charged pursuant to the statutory formula with the 'murder and be convicted thereunder as accessory thereto upon evidence so showing. State v. Williamson, 282 Md. at 110.21 As an accessory before the fact he is punished as a partaker of the guilt of the principal and is liable to the same punishment as the principal. Therefore, the absence of the phrase “or as accessory thereto” in the statute prescribing the punishment for second degree murder is of no moment; it does not result in a crime without-a penalty. See Perkins at p. 7. The phrase was mere surplusage in the former law, and under the new statute, as under the old, a person convicted of murder in the second degree as an accessory before the fact may be punished by imprisonment for not more than 30 years.

In any event, the 1978 Act is not applicable with respect to the offense for which Ward may be tried, namely, the murder in the second degree of Godbout as accessory before the fact. Acts 1978, ch. 3, § 3, provides: “That this Act shall take effect July 1, 1978, and shall apply only to offenses committed on or after that date, for which the defendant is sentenced pursuant to this Act.” Since the offense charged to Ward occurred prior to 1 July 1978, the Act does not apply to repeal the former § 414 prescribing the punishment for murder in the second degree. Former § 414 remains in full force and effect with respect to the punishment to which Ward is subject if he is convicted of the murder in the second degree of Godbout as an accessory before the fact.

VI

Ward filed below a separate motion to dimiss the indictment on the ground that a trial would violate the double jeopardy clause of the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Ward filed a cross-appeal presenting the question whether retrial was barred by the double jeopardy provision. The State moved to dismiss the cross-appeal *211alleging that there had been no final judgment on that motion to dismiss. Code (1974) §§ 12-101 and 12-301 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article. The motion was expressly not ruled upon by the judge below. The judgment of the trial judge in dismissing the indictment was explicitly not predicated upon a violation of the constitutional guarantee against being placed twice in jeopardy. We have said that a denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment on the ground of double jeopardy is appealable immediately, Stewart v. State, 282 Md. 557, 570, 386 A. 2d 1206 (1978), but here there was no such denial. Moreover, we are not persuaded in the circumstances to exercise our discretion under Rule 885 to decide the point even though not decided by the trial court. The motion to dismiss the cross-appeal is granted.

Judgment reversed; case remanded for trial in accordance with this opinion; motion to dismiss cross-appeal granted; costs to be paid by appellee.

SCOLNIK, Justice.

William Linscott appeals from a judgment following a jury-waived trial in the Superior Court, Waldo County, convicting him of one count of murder, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A) (1983), and one count of robbery, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 651(1)(D) (1983). He contends that his conviction of intentional or knowing murder as an accomplice under the accomplice liability statute, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 57(3)(A) (1983), violated his constitutional right to due process of law in that he lacked the requisite intent to commit murder. We find no merit in the defendant’s argument and affirm the judgment.

The facts are not in dispute. On December 12, 1984, the defendant, then unemployed, and two other men — the defend*1068ant’s step-brother, Phillip Willey, and Jeffrey Colby — drove from his trailer in Belmont, Maine to the house of a friend, Joel Fuller. Fuller, with a sawed-off shotgun in his possession, joined the others. The defendant drove to the residence of Larry Ackley, where Fuller obtained 12-gauge shotgun shells.

Later that evening, Fuller suggested that the four men drive to the house of a reputed cocaine dealer, Norman Grenier of Swanville, take Grenier by surprise, and rob him. The defendant agreed to the plan, reasoning that Grenier, being a reputed drug dealer, would be extremely reluctant to call the police and request they conduct a robbery investigation that might result in the discovery of narcotics in his possession. Fuller stated that Grenier had purchased two kilograms of cocaine that day, and that Grenier had been seen with $50,000 in cash. Fuller guaranteed the defendant $10,000 as his share of the proceeds of the robbery.

The four drove up to Grenier’s house, which was situated in a heavily wooded rural area on a dead-end road in Swanville. The defendant and Fuller left the car and approached the house. The defendant carried a hunting knife and switchblade, and Fuller was armed with the shotgun. Wil-ley and Colby drove off in the defendant’s car and returned later for the defendant and Fuller.

The defendant and Fuller walked around to the back of Grenier’s house. At that time, Grenier and his girlfriend were watching television in their living room. The defendant and Fuller intended to break in the back door in order to place themselves between Grenier and the bedroom, where they believed Grenier kept a loaded shotgun. Because the back door was blocked by snow, the two men walked around to the front of the house. Under their revised plan the defendant was to break the living room picture window whereupon Fuller would show his shotgun to Grenier, who presumably would be dissuaded from offering any resistance.

The defendant subsequently broke the living room window with his body without otherwise physically entering the house. Fuller immediately fired a shot through the broken window, hitting Grenier in the chest. Fuller left through the broken window after having removed about $1,300 from Grenier’s pants pocket, later returning to the house to retrieve an empty shotgun casing. The two men returned to the road and waited behind a bush for the return of the defendant’s car. The defendant and Fuller were later dropped off at Fuller’s house, where both men burned several articles of their clothing. Fuller gave the defendant $500, presumably from the money stolen from Grenier.

On March 27, 1985, the defendant was indicted on one count of murder, 17-A M.R. S.A. § 201(1)(A) (1983), and one count of robbery, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 651(1)(D) (1983). At a jury-waived trial, which commenced on January 6, 1986, the defendant testified that he knew Fuller to be a hunter and that it was not unusual for Fuller to carry a firearm with him, even at night. He nevertheless stated that he had no knowledge of any reputation for violence that Fuller may have had. The defendant further testified that he had no intention of causing anyone’s death in the course of the robbery.

At the completion of the trial on January 8, 1986, the trial justice found the defendant guilty of robbery and, on a theory of accomplice liability, found him guilty of murder. The court specifically found that the defendant possessed the intent to commit the crime of robbery, that Fuller intentionally or at least knowingly caused the death of Grenier, and that this murder was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s participation in the robbery. However, the court also found that the defendant did not intend to kill Grenier, and that the defendant probably would not have participated in the robbery had he believed that Grenier would be killed in the course of the enterprise.

The sole issue raised on appeal is whether the defendant’s conviction pursuant to *1069the second sentence of subsection 3-A of the accomplice liability statute, 17-A M.R. S.A. § 57 (1983),1 unconstitutionally violates his right to due process under Article I, section 6-A of the Maine Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. “[T]he Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1072, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). The defendant contends that the accomplice liability statute impermissi-bly allows the State to find him guilty of murder, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder was committed either intentionally or knowingly, without having to prove either of these two culpable mental states. Instead, the defendant argues, the accomplice liability statute permits the State to employ only a mere negligence standard in convicting him of murder in violation of his right to due process. We find the defendant’s argument to be without merit.

The second sentence of section 57(3)(A) endorses the “foreseeable consequence” rule of accomplice liability. See State v. Goodall, 407 A.2d 268, 278 (Me.1979).2 In that case we stated that

[t]he history of the statute demonstrates that the legislature indeed intended to impose liability upon accomplices for those crimes that were the reasonably foreseeable consequence of their criminal enterprise, notwithstanding an absence on their part of the same culpability required for conviction as a principal to the crime.

Id. (emphasis added). Accordingly, we have stated that section 57(3)(A) is to be interpreted as follows: Under the first sentence of that section, which is to be read independently of the second sentence,

liability for a “primary crime” ... [here, robbery] is established by proof that the actor intended to promote or facilitate that crime. Under the second sentence, liability for any “secondary crime” ... [here, murder] that may have been committed by the principal is established upon a two-fold showing: (a) that the actor intended to promote the primary crime, and (b) that the commission of the secondary crime was a “foreseeable consequence” of the actor’s participation in the primary crime.

Id. at 277-278 (footnote omitted; emphasis in original). We have consistently upheld *1070this interpretation of section 57(3)(A). See State v. Armstrong, 503 A.2d 701, 703 (Me.1986); State v. Johnson, 434 A.2d 532, 538 (Me.1981); State v. Kimball, 424 A.2d 684, 693 (Me.1981); State v. Anderson, 409 A.2d 1290, 1303 (Me.1979). We discern no compelling reason to depart from this construction of the statute.

Furthermore, the foreseeable consequence rule as stated in Section 57(3)(A) merely carries over the objective standards of accomplice liability as used in the common law. See State v. Goodall, 407 A.2d at 278, citing State v. Simpson, 276 A.2d 292, 295 & n. 2 (Me.1971).3 Thus, a rule allowing for a murder conviction under a theory of accomplice liability based upon an objective standard, despite the absence of evidence that the defendant possessed the culpable subjective mental state that constitutes an element of the crime of murder, does not represent a departure from prior Maine law.

Moreover, we have upheld the constitutionality of two related statutes, the felony murder statute, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 202 (1983), and the depraved indifference murder statute, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(a)(B), (1-A) (1983 & Supp.1986). See State v. Reardon, 486 A.2d 112 (Me.1984); State v. Michaud, 513 A.2d 842 (Me.1986). As in the felony murder and depraved indifference statutes, the Legislature in enacting the accomplice liability statute similarly intended that a subjective culpable mental state on the part of the accomplice is not required. So long as the accomplice intended to promote the primary crime, and the commission of the secondary crime was a foreseeable consequence of the accomplice’s participation in the primary crime, no further evidence of the accomplice’s subjective state of mind as to the secondary crime is required. We find no fundamental unfairness in this statutory scheme.

We also do not find fundamentally unfair or disproportionate the grading scheme for sentencing purposes between felony murder and murder premised on a theory of accomplice liability,4 because, as we stated in State v. Kimball, there is a “critical difference between ‘accomplice’ guilt of the crime of ‘Murder’ in violation of Section 201 and guilt of the separate and distinct offense of ‘Felony murder’ in violation of Section 202 ... ”:

This critical difference relates to the nature of the homicide required to be “a reasonably foreseeable consequence.” The guilt of defendant A of Section 202 “Felony murder” can arise because a person’s death is caused by the actions of defendant B alone, even though the circumstances are not such that defendant B’s conduct in causing the death becomes “Murder”, in violation of Section 201. In contrast, defendant A’s guilt of Section 201 “Murder,” by reason of “accomplice” accountability under Section 57(1) in combination with the second sentence of Section 57(3)(A), can arise only if, as an indispensible element, the commission by defendant B of the crime of Section 201 “Murder” was “a reasonably foreseeable consequence of ... [the] *1071conduct” of defendant A described in the first sentence of Section 57(3)(A).

Id., 424 A.2d at 692 (emphasis in original). The potential penalty of life imprisonment for murder under a theory of accomplice liability based on an objective standard “does not denote such punitive severity as to shock the conscience of the public, nor our own respective or collective sense of fairness.” State v. Reardon, 486 A.2d at 121. “In the criminal homicide field the jurisprudence of this State has been constant in maintaining that the subjective mental, emotional or other behavioral state or condition of the defendant not be an indispensably controlling factor in evaluation of the punitive seriousness of the crime.” Id. (emphasis in original).

For the foregoing reasons, we find no constitutional defect in this statutory provision, nor any fundamental unfairness in its operation.

The entry is:

Judgment affirmed.

All concurring.

CARRICO, C.J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Indicted for involuntary manslaughter, Joseph A. Bailey was convicted in a jury trial and sentenced in accordance with the jury’s verdict to serve six months in jail and to pay a fine of $1,000. The question on appeal is whether it was proper to convict Bailey of involuntary manslaughter when, in his absence, the victim was killed by police officers responding to reports from Bailey concerning the victim’s conduct.

*260The death of the victim, Gordon E. Murdock, occurred during the late evening of May 21, 1983, in the aftermath of an extended and vituperative conversation between Bailey and Murdock over their citizens’ band radios. During the conversation, which was to be the last in a series of such violent incidents, Bailey and Murdock cursed and threatened each other repeatedly.

Bailey and Murdock lived about two miles apart in the Roanoke area. On the evening in question, each was intoxicated. Bailey had consumed a “twelve-pack” of beer and a “fifth of liquor” since mid-afternoon; a test of Murdock’s blood made during an autopsy showed alcoholic content of “.271% ... by weight.” Murdock was also “legally blind,” with vision of only 3/200 in the right eye and 2/200 in the left. Bailey knew that Murdock had “a problem with vision” and that he was intoxicated on the night in question.

Bailey also knew that Murdock owned a handgun and had boasted “about how he would use it and shoot it and scare people off with it.” Bailey knew further that Murdock was easily agitated and that he became especially angry if anyone disparaged his war hero, General George S. Patton. During the conversation in question, Bailey implied that General Patton and Murdock himself were homosexuals.

Also during the conversation, Bailey persistently demanded that Murdock arm himself with his handgun and wait on his front porch for Bailey to come and injure or kill him. Murdock responded by saying he would be waiting on his front porch, and he told Bailey to “kiss [his] mother or [his] wife and children goodbye because [he would] never go back home.”

Bailey then made two anonymous telephone calls to the Roanoke City Police Department. In the first, Bailey reported “a man . . . out on the porch [at Murdock’s address] waving a gun around.” A police car was dispatched to the address, but the officers reported they did not “see anything.”

Bailey called Murdock back on the radio and chided him for not “going out on the porch.” More epithets and threats were exchanged. Bailey told Murdock he was “going to come up there in a blue and white car”1 and demanded that Murdock “step out there on the . . . porch” with his gun “in [his] hands” because he, Bailey, would “be there in just a minute.”

*261Bailey telephoned the police again. This time, Bailey identified Murdock by name and told the dispatcher that Murdock had “a gun on the porch,” had “threatened to shoot up the neighborhood,” and was “talking about shooting anything that moves.” Bailey insisted that the police “come out here and straighten this man out.” Bailey refused to identify himself, explaining that he was “right next to [Murdock] out here” and feared revealing his identity.

Three uniformed police officers, Chambers, Beavers, and Turner, were dispatched to Murdock’s home. None of the officers knew that Murdock was intoxicated or that he was in an agitated state of mind. Only Officer Beavers knew that Murdock’s eyesight was bad, and he did not know “exactly how bad it was.” Beavers also knew that Murdock would get “a little 10-96 (mental subject) occasionally” and would “curse and carry on” when he was drinking.

When the officers arrived on the scene, they found that Murdock’s “porch light was on” but observed no one on the porch. After several minutes had elapsed, the officers observed Murdock come out of his house with “something shiny in his hand.” Murdock sat down on the top step of the porch and placed the shiny object beside him.

Officer Chambers approached Murdock from the side of the porch and told him to “[l]eave the gun alone and walk down the stairs away from it.” Murdock “just sat there.” When Chambers repeated his command, Murdock cursed him. Murdock then reached for the gun, stood up, advanced in Chambers’ direction, and opened fire. Chambers retreated and was not struck.

All three officers returned fire, and Murdock was struck. Lying wounded on the porch, he said several times, “I didn’t know you was the police.” He died from “a gunshot wound of the left side of the chest.” In the investigation which followed, Bailey stated that he was “the hoss that caused the loss.”

In an instruction granted below and not questioned on appeal, the trial court told the jury it should convict Bailey if it found that his negligence or reckless conduct was so gross and culpable as to indicate a callous disregard for human life and that his actions were the proximate cause or a concurring cause of Murdock’s death. Bailey concedes that the evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, would support a finding that his actions constituted negligence so gross and culpable as *262to indicate a callous disregard for human life. He contends, however, that he “did not kill Murdock.”

Bailey argues that his conviction can be sustained only if he was a principal in the first degree, a principal in the second degree, or an accessory before the fact to the killing of Murdock. The Attorney General concedes that Bailey was not a principal in the second degree or an accessory before the fact, but maintains that he was a principal in the first degree.

Countering, Bailey argues he was not a principal in the first degree because only the immediate perpetrators of crime occupy that status. Here, Bailey says, the immediate perpetrators of Murdock’s killing were the police officers who returned Murdock’s fire.2 He was in his own home two miles away, Bailey asserts, and did not control the actors in the confrontation at Murdock’s home or otherwise participate in the events that occurred there. Hence, Bailey concludes, he could not have been a principal in the first degree.

We have adopted the rule in this Commonwealth, however, that one who effects a criminal act through an innocent or unwitting agent is a principal in the first degree. Collins v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 223, 233, 307 S.E.2d 884, 890 (1983) (undercover policewoman ruled innocent agent to collect fees for defendant charged with pandering); Dusenbery v. Commonwealth, 220 Va. 770, 772, 263 S.E.2d 392, 393 (1980) (person who acts through an innocent or unwitting agent is a principal in first degree, but not in rape cases). And, in State v. Benton, 276 N.C. 641, 653, 174 S.E.2d 793, 801 (1970), cited with approval in Collins, the court stated that the innocent-agent rule applies even though the person accused was not present at the time and place of the offense.

Bailey argues that the present case is distinguishable from Collins. There, Bailey says, the accused and the undercover policewoman were working in concert, pursuing a common goal of soliciting and collecting fees for sexual favors; although the policewoman was innocent of the crime of pandering because she had no intent to perform sexual acts, the accused was guilty nevertheless because the fees were collected on his behalf. Here, Bailey asserts, he and the police shared no common scheme or goal. *263Neither, Bailey says, did he share a common goal with Murdock; indeed, “Murdock’s intent was to kill Bailey.”

The question is not, however, whether Murdock was Bailey’s innocent or unwitting agent but whether the police officers who responded to Bailey’s calls occupied that status. And, in resolving this question, we believe it is irrelevant whether Bailey and the police shared a common scheme or goal. What is relevant is whether Bailey undertook to cause Murdock harm and used the police to accomplish that purpose, a question which we believe must be answered affirmatively.

Knowing that Murdock was intoxicated, nearly blind, and in an agitated state of mind, Bailey orchestrated a scenario on the evening of May 21, 1983, whose finale was bound to include harmful consequences to Murdock, either in the form of his arrest or his injury or death. Bailey angered Murdock with accusations of homosexuality concerning Murdock himself as well as his war hero. Bailey then demanded repeatedly that Murdock arm himself with his handgun and wait on his front porch for Bailey to arrive. Bailey also threatened repeatedly that when he arrived at Murdock’s home he would inflict serious injury upon Murdock and even kill him.

Having aroused Murdock’s wrath and having led him to expect a violent confrontation, Bailey made two anonymous telephone calls to the police. In those calls, he falsely reported Murdock’s conduct by saying the latter had threatened to “shoot up” the neighborhood and to shoot anything that moved, when Murdock had not made such threats. Bailey falsified his own ability to observe Murdock’s conduct by telling the police that he, Bailey, was “right next to [Murdock] out here,” when he was actually two miles away. And Bailey neglected to tell the police that Murdock was intoxicated and blind and in an agitated state of mind.

From a factual standpoint, it is clear from the sum total of Bailey’s actions that his purpose in calling the police was to induce them to go to Murdock’s home and unwittingly create the appearance that Bailey himself had arrived to carry out the threats he had made over the radio. And, from a legal standpoint, it is clear that, for Bailey’s mischievous purpose, the police officers who went to Murdock’s home and confronted him were acting as Bailey’s innocent or unwitting agents.

But, Bailey argues, he cannot be held criminally liable in this case unless Murdock’s death was the natural and probable result *264of Bailey’s conduct. Bailey maintains that either Murdock’s own reckless and criminal conduct in opening fire upon the police or the officers’ return fire constituted an independent, intervening cause absolving Bailey of guilt.

We have held, however, that “[a]n intervening act which is reasonably foreseeable cannot be relied upon as breaking the chain of causal connection between an original act of negligence and subsequent injury.” Delawder v. Commonwealth, 214 Va. 55, 58, 196 S.E.2d 913, 915 (1973) (defendant lost control of vehicle while racing and struck pedestrian; striking of defendant’s vehicle by other car not intervening cause). Here, under instructions not questioned on appeal, the jury determined that the fatal consequences of Bailey’s reckless conduct could reasonably have been foreseen and, accordingly, that Murdock’s death was not the result of an independent, intervening cause but of Bailey’s misconduct. At the least, the evidence presented a jury question on these issues. See id.

Finally, Bailey maintains that his conviction is improper in light of our decision in Wooden v. Commonwealth, 222 Va. 758, 284 S.E.2d 811 (1981). There, the accused participated in a robbery with accomplices Anthony and Frye. The victim shot and killed Anthony, and Frye then shot and killed the victim. The accused was convicted of felony-murder for both killings. We reversed the conviction for the killing of the co-felon. We said that because malice is an essential element of felony-murder and because there was no evidence that the victim killed the co-felon with malice, there was no malice in the death of the co-felon that could be imputed to the accused under the felony-murder rule. Accordingly, we held that “a criminal participant in a felony may not be convicted of the felony-murder of a co-felon killed by the victim of the initial felony.” Id. at 765, 284 S.E.2d at 816.

Reading our opinion to say that we reversed in Wooden because the killing of the co-felon was a justifiable homicide, Bailey argues that we should take the same action here because “Murdock’s death was [also] a justifiable homicide.” As the Attorney General points out, however, we did not reverse in Wooden because the victim’s killing of the co-felon constituted a justifiable homicide but because malice, an essential element of a murder prosecution, was lacking. In this case, a manslaughter prosecution, proof of malice is not required, and, moreover, there is no lack of *265proof of any of the elements essential to Bailey’s conviction. Accordingly, we will affirm the conviction.

Affirmed.