If someone dies during the commission of a crime, the person's committing the crime bear the responsibility of that death whether they actually did the killing or not. It's supposed to make you think harder about "simple" crimes like burglary and robbery, where no one is supposed to get hurt....because, people often get hurt or killed during these types of crimes.

Sounds like nonsense to me. He didn't kill anyone, so charging him with "murder" is ridiculous.

https://www.justia.com/criminal/offe...felony-murder/

You can call it whatever you want, calling it Felony Murder is even more like saying "You murdered that person", only he didn't kill anyone. The police did. This is a ridiculous law.

It's like if you're involved in robbing a bank but are the getaway driver. You never entered the bank and you don't even have a firearm, but one of your crew gets nervous and ends up shooting someone inside the bank who dies.

Guess what? You are also guilty of that shooting. While you rarely get as strict a sentence as the actual shooter you will still be sentenced for it.

Only in this case they weren't robbing a bank. And the police shot one of them. Justified or not, I can't see how that is a murder charge. And he wasn't given a light sentence for it, he got 30 years on top of his sentence. This is absolutely ridiculous.

It wasn't just the police shooting one of them. They were shooting at the police and the police returned fire and one of them got killed. If they weren't trying to kill the cops that wouldn't have happened, would it?

This kid was not innocent in any way.

And that is entirely fair game. What doesn't make sense is for one of them to get a murder charge based on that. That's just wanting to find excuses to increase punishment. This has no goal in creating either justice, reform or order of society.

They were acting as a group and as such, they all take the same responsibility for each other's actions and the consequences thereof. I think that is entirely fair. Ask any parent. If he didn't want to be responsible for the consequences, maybe he shouldn't have been out burglarizing homes with his buddies.

Now I do think the punishment (65 years?) was a bit harsh for a 15-year-old teenager (his age at the time). They could have let him serve his sentences in parallel. But maybe he can get parole if he behaves.

Felony murder means that someone was killed as a result of you committing a crime. So a getaway driver sitting outside a bank during a robbery can be charged with felony murder if one of his accomplices kills someone inside the bank, even if he wasn't directly involved, and even if the killing was unintentional or even accidental.

So in this case, the officer's use of deadly force was legal, but since someone died during the suspect's commission of a crime, he gets a felony murder charge.

This case is actually pretty straight forward.

I stole your example... that's what I get for not reading the whole thread before responding.

Although I agree with the law if it's an innocent civilian or arresting officer that gets killed, this is one of the offending parties, equally complicit. Seems like it should be null and void in that case.

This is purely a Hypothetical question (I'm not implying this is the case):

Would your opinion change if he was the one that convinced all the others to go do the crime with him?

The bank robbery example was meant for illustrative purposes only but more to the matter at hand; I believe that you left out some pertinent details in order to bolster your argument