KREMER, J.

Thomas Gaetano Phillip Luparello and Carlos Orduna appeal respective judgments convicting them of conspiracy to commit an assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury (Pennal Code, sections 182, subdivision 1, and 245) and murder (section 187). . . . On appeal, Luparello contends . . . [that] complicity theories cannot support his charged criminal liability. . . . For the reasons set out below, we reject . . . defendant's contentions and affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

Luparello practiced chiropractics and Terri Cesak was his patient. Luparello eventually hired Terri as a receptionist, and soon they began an affair. Under pressure from Luparello's wife, Terri left her job in May 1980. Terri then met and shortly thereafter married Ed Gadzinski.

[Over the next year, Terri went back and forth between Luparello and her husband a number of times. On May 8, 1981, Terri left Luparello for Ed without telling him where she was going. She was pregnant with Luparello's child.

Upon learning that Terri left, Luparello rounded up some friends to find her. They decided to find out where Terri and Ed's location from Mark Martin, who was a good friend of Ed's. They planned to "thump" Martin in order to get this information. On May 13, Luparello and his friends tried to lure Mark out of his house in order to beat him up get information from him, but were unsuccessful. On May 14, two friends of Luparello, Orduna and Salmon, went to Martin's house without Luparello. They were armed with a rifle. Upon arriving at Martin's house, Orduna managed to lure Martin out of the house, where upon someone in Orduna's car shot and killed Martin.]

Luparello and Orduna were charged with conspiracy to commit an assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury and murder and were alleged to have intentionally killed Martin while lying in wait. . . . After a joint trial, the jury found Luparello and Orduna guilty on both counts and the allegations the defendants were armed to be true. . . .

The trial court charged the jury with several different theories by which Luparello's guilt for first degree murder could be affixed; among these were conspiracy and aiding and abetting. . . .

Luparello . . . attacks the theoretical underpinnings of conspiratorial and aiding-and-abetting liability, and specifically argues the murder here was the unplanned and unintended act of a coconspirator and therefore not chargeable to Luparello under either complicity theory.

Luparello first faults both theories for "imposing" the mens rea of the perpetrator upon him. As Luparello views it, both theories work to presume conclusively the accomplice shares the perpetrator's intent. . . . Indeed, Luparello errs when he concludes the perpetrator and accomplice must "share" an identical intent to be found criminally responsible for the same crime. Technically, only the perpetrator can (and must) manifest the mens rea of the crime committed. Accomplice liability is premised on a different or, more appropriately, an equivalent mens rea. (Kadish, Complicity, Cause and Blame: A Study in the Interpretation of Doctrine . . . [hereafter cited as Complicity Doctrine].) This equivalence is found in intentionally encouraging or assisting or influencing the nefarious act. "[By] intentionally acting to further the criminal actions of another, the [accomplice] voluntarily identifies himself with the principal party. The intention to further the acts of another, which creates liability under criminal law, may be understood as equivalent to manifesting consent to liability under the civil law." (Complicity Doctrine. . . .) Thus, to be a principal to a crime, the conspirator need only intend to agree or conspire and to commit the offense which is the object of the conspiracy ( People v. Horn . . .); while the aider and abettor must intend to commit the offense or to encourage or facilitate its commission ( People v. Beeman . . .). Liability is extended to reach the actual, rather than the planned or "intended" crime, committed on the policy conspirators and aiders and abettors should be responsible for the criminal harms they have naturally, probably and foreseeably put in motion. And it is precisely this policy which Luparello next challenges. . . .

. . . Luparello maintains neither complicity theory can, in logic, predicate a murder charge against him on the unintended act of a coconspirator and, as applied in this case, are therefore theoretically infirm. . . . As one commentator explained: "[The] concept of agency explains a great deal about why we feel justified in punishing an accomplice as if she were the perpetrator. Perhaps, however, our feelings may be described better in terms of 'forfeited personal identity.' Ordinarily a person is held criminally responsible for his own actions. However, when an accomplice chooses to become a part of the criminal activity of another, she says in essence, 'your acts are my acts,' and forfeits her personal identity. We euphemistically may impute the actions of the perpetrator to the accomplice by 'agency' doctrine; in reality, we demand that she who chooses to aid in a crime forfeits her right to be treated as an individual. Thus, moral distinctions between parties are rendered irrelevant. We pretend the accomplice is no more than an incorporeal shadow." (Dressler, Reassessing the Theoretical Underpinnings of Accomplice Liability: New Solutions to an Old Problem. . . .) Professor Kadish himself noted: "It is apparent that the grip of the conception that a voluntary human action bars assigning causal responsibility to an earlier actor, pervasive as it is in the law, is loosened by the pull of the policy holding people liable for recklessly providing others with an occasion to do harm. . . ." (Complicity Doctrine. . . .)

The California Supreme Court implicitly recognized this "pull of policy" in the recent case of People v. Croy . . . : "The requirement that the jury determine the intent with which a person tried as an aider and abettor has acted is not designed to ensure that his conduct constitutes the offense with which he is charged. His liability is vicarious. Like the conspirator whose liability is predicated on acts other than and short of those constituting the elements of the charged offense, if the acts are undertaken with the intent that the actual perpetrator's purpose be facilitated thereby, he is a principal and liable for the commission of the offense. Also like a conspirator, he is guilty not only of the offense he intended to facilitate or encourage, but also of any reasonably foreseeable offense committed by the person he aids and abets. . . . It follows that a defendant whose liability is predicated on his status as an aider and abettor need not have intended to encourage or facilitate the particular offense ultimately committed by the perpetrator. His knowledge that an act which is criminal was intended, and his action taken with the intent that the act be encouraged or facilitated, are sufficient to impose liability on him for any reasonably foreseeable offense committed as a consequence by the perpetrator. It is the intent to encourage and bring about conduct that is criminal, not the specific intent that is an element of the target offense, which Beeman holds must be found by the jury. . . ."

Adopting the reasoning of the Supreme Court, we find the conspiracy and aiding and abetting theories proffered here do not suffer the theoretical infirmities of which Luparello complains. In the circumstances of this case, each provides a sound basis to derive Luparello's criminal responsibility for first degree murder. . . .

WIENER, J. concurring.

I concur in the majority opinion with the exception of sections V and VI in Luparello's appeal. As to those issues, I concur in the result reached by the majority under the compulsion of People v. Beeman . . . and People v. Croy. . . . Those cases require a holding that an aider and abettor or coconspirator is liable not only for those crimes committed by a cofelon which he intended or agreed to facilitate but also for any additional crimes which are "reasonably foreseeable." . . .

The fact that the Supreme Court has announced a principle of law certainly requires that as an intermediate appellate court we follow it. This does not mean however, that the announced principle is either logically consistent or theoretically sound. . . . I will briefly comment on what I perceive to be the serious incongruities created by the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine.

Professor Kadish argues that the theory underlying accomplice liability does not permit liability to attach to an accomplice or coconspirator for the acts of another unless the accomplice or coconspirator intended such acts. He explains that the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine "would seem to allow holding the accomplice for a crime of knowledge or purpose committed by the principal as long as he should have anticipated the principal's actions."

The major fallacy I see in the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine is not so much that it attributes an unintended act to the accomplice/co-conspirator but rather that it assesses the degree of his culpability for that act not by his own mental state but rather by the mental state of the perpetrator and/or the circumstances of the crime. The present case provides an appropriate example. The assault on Mark Martin contemplated by the conspiracy involved a foreseeable risk of death or serious injury. We can assume (although there was no jury finding on the issue) that Luparello was criminally negligent in failing to appreciate the degree of risk. Under usual circumstances, a person negligently causing the death of another is guilty, at most, of involuntary manslaughter. Here, however, Luparello's liability is not based on his individual mental state but instead turns on the jury's finding that the unidentified shooter intentionally killed Martin while lying in wait. Thus, Luparello is guilty of first degree murder. If the circumstances of Luparello's participation were exactly the same but the shooter did not "lie in wait," Luparello could only be convicted of second degree murder. I am intrigued by the notion that if unknown to Luparello, the shooter ingested drugs and/or alcohol to the point where he did not in fact harbor the requisite malice, Luparello would presumably be guilty only of voluntary manslaughter. And to take it a step further, if it turned out the shooter was insane, would Luparello have no liability at all for Martin's homicide? As I explained in my Martin dissent, I find such fortuity of result irrational. So too, apparently, do Professors LaFave and Scott in their treatise on criminal law: "The 'natural and probable consequence' rule of accomplice liability, if viewed as a broad generalization, is inconsistent with more fundamental principles of our system of criminal law. It would permit liability to be predicated upon negligence even when the crime involved requires a different state of mind. Such is not possible as to one who has personally committed a crime, and should likewise not be the case as to those who havegiven aid or counsel." (LaFave & Scott, Handbook on Criminal Law. . . .)

The drafters of the Model Penal Code reached a similar conclusion. Section 2.06(3)(a) establishes a standard for accomplice liability which, like California's governing Beeman standard, requires that the accomplice act "with the purpose of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense, . . ." Missing from the Model Penal Code, however, is any reference to the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine. The Comment to the section addresses the issue as follows: "[The accomplice] must have the purpose to promote or facilitate the particular conduct that forms the basis for the charge, and thus he will not be liable for conduct that does not fall within this purpose. . . . when a wholly different crime has been committed, thus involving conduct not within the conscious objectives of the accomplice, he is not liable for it. . . ."

In contrast to the majority, which seeks to distinguish the "forseeable consequence" doctrine from the "disfavored" felony-murder rule, I view both as being founded on the same outmoded and logically indefensible proposition that if a person exhibits some intent to violate the law, we need not be terribly concerned that the contemplated crime was far less serious than the crime which actually took place. . . .

In our means-oriented society, to have the end alone justify the punishment is unconscionable. The artificial imputation of stepped-up intent, inherent in both the felony-murder rule and the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine, is inconsistent with the "universal and persistent" notion that criminal punishment must be proportional to the defendant's culpable mental state. Justice Mosk's dissent in Taylor v. Superior Court . . . expressed it well: "Fundamental principles of criminal responsibility dictate that the defendant be subject to a greater penalty only when he has demonstrated a greater degree of culpability. To ignore that rule is at best to frustrate the deterrent purpose of punishment, and at worst to risk constitutional invalidation on the ground of invidious discrimination." The fact that the accomplice or co-conspirator intended to facilitate some less serious criminal act does not render these fundamental principles inapplicable. . . . Here, . . . Luparello has been convicted of first degree murder under circumstances where, in the absence of the "foreseeable consequence" doctrine, he would be guilty at most of involuntary manslaughter. . . .