Felony murder can be a difficult concept, and it comes in many variations, as we’ve written about in a prior post. It’s often been a charge juries in Wichita struggle with: If the person doesn’t actually kill someone, are they still guilty of murder?
The New York Times reports in its new series on U.S. justice, “American Exceptions”, that holding accomplices as responsible as the people who commit violent crimes is the legal progeny of an old European law that’s since been disowned by other countries. As Adam Liptak reports it’s now purely American:
“Most scholars trace the doctrine, which is an aspect of the felony murder rule, to English common law, but Parliament abolished it in 1957,” Liptak writes. “… India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated ‘the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.’ “