Bailey v. Commonwealth
Supreme Court of Virginia
329 S.E.2d 37 (1985)
Bailey (defendant) got into a heated radio argument with Murdock, threatened to come hurt or kill him, and repeatedly goaded Murdock -- who Bailey knew was drunk, legally blind, and agitated -- to wait armed on his porch for Bailey's arrival. Instead of going himself, Bailey anonymously called police twice, falsely reporting a man with a gun threatening the neighborhood. Police arrived, ordered the armed Murdock to move away from his gun, and when Murdock instead grabbed it and opened fire, they shot and killed him; Murdock said before dying that he hadn't known they were police. Bailey was convicted of murder as a principal, and he appealed, arguing he could not be a principal because he lacked any common scheme with the police.
Whether a defendant who uses the police as an unwitting instrument to bring about a person's death is guilty as a principal in the first degree, even absent any shared criminal scheme between the defendant and the police.