this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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This is basic felony murder shit. Any attorney worth their salt should have been telling him to take the plea deal, because felony murder is a Big Fucking Deal. To be more exact, 46 of 50 states have some version of a felony murder statute, and in 24 of them--just under half--felony murder is a capital crime, and can potentially receive the death penalty.
A good attorney would be communicating this clearly to their client, and make sure that the client understood that going to trial would likely mean decades in prison, and possibly a death penalty; the odds of beating the charge, if you participated in the underlying crime, are very, very poor.
Here's the basic deal: when a deal occurs during the course of committing certain felonies, any major participant in the commission of that crime are guilty of causing that death. If you're the getaway driver in a bank robbery, and all of the robbers get killed by security guards, you get charged with murder for their deaths, even though it was legal for the security guards to use lethal force against them. Smith was one of the participants in the burglary, and it was during the commission of the burglary that Washington attacked a police officer and was killed. Because Smith was an active participant in that burglary, he's guilty of that death, even though Washington was justifiably killed by a cop.
And, BTW, this isn't bootlicking bullshit. It didn't need to be a cop that killed Washington for a felony murder charge to apply to Smith. If Washington had attacked the homeowner, and the homeowner had killled Washington, it would have been the same felony murder charge for Smith.
I mean, that's still mighty fucked up. So you're accomplice couldn't run as fast as you and you get charged with their death someone else caused? How are people ok with that?
And yes I totally understand that it was a justified shooting but charging someone with murder when they didn't murder someone one is insane as fuck.
It's pretty simple to understand: you were a participant in the underlying felony that lead to someone's death. Had that underlying event not happened, no death would have happened. Because you participated in the event, you share the legal responsibility.
It's the same general principle as RICO (racketeer influenced and corrupt organization) laws; when you participate in a criminal undertaking, you're responsible for the results of that activity. If you don't want to be responsible for the results, then you shouldn't participate in the crime.
...And if you do participate in the crime, take the goddamn plea deal instead of expecting that the jury is going to nullify the results, because jury nullification is both very rare, and leads to a lot of undesirable results.
Don't even have to be present. If you say and planned an armed robbery with a gang, then fell asleep and they went out and enacted the plan, and someone died (either a gang member, or a third party) as a result. You're liable if they can prove that involvement.
If I'm responsible for, or significantly involved in planning the robbery, but I'm not part of the execution of the robbery, then of course I should be charged. That's not significantly different from hiring a hitman to commit a murder for me.
That's what criminal conspiracy charges are all about.