Legal reasoning often doesn’t make much sense to me. Felony murder laws seem to be a form of legal roulette. If the idea is to punish someone for doing something that could result in a death, then that should apply to anyone who does that thing, whether or not they’re unlucky enough to have that probability realized.
None of that makes sense to me. Criminals are particularly bad at estimating the chances attached to the various consequences that might result from their actions. I’m far from convinced that adding an extra sentence to one possibility leads them to reconsider their action. They tend to do crimes because they can discount the chance of being caught, so they can also discount the chance of a death.
So a lot of people in this thread seem to be arguing that every burglar should get a minimum of 45 years because they could have been shot, regardless of whether there was a person or a weapon available to do the shooting, or whether that person is successful in killing a burglar.
A number of people in this thread have expressed unreserved approval at the outcome of this case. Can they really believe that a 50-year sentence is appropriate for kids who committed a burglary?
They may also have jaywalked on the way to the burglary. But we don’t say they got 50 years for jaywalking. They didn’t *just *commit burglary. They committed felony murder - for which the penalty was 50 years.
Well, somebody died because they decided to break into a house that was not theirs. Like I said earlier, that’s not an accident or a mistake. Kids of 16 know which house is theirs and which house is not theirs. I sound like an old crank, but jesus, stay out of other peoples homes and everything would be much better.
I think the disconnect is that society has not consistently treated burglary as a terrible crime, as if it’s just a “property crime.” Thus, murder charges stemming from a “relatively” minor crime seems like a huge over-reaction. If someone died during a kidnapping or a bank robbery, I think more people would say, “well that’s the breaks, it’s felony murder for you, committing a violent crime, shit happens.” In my opinion, burglary should be viewed as a violent crime since the potential for very bad things happening is always present.
As has been pointed out already, besides being devoid of human compassion, that stance opens up, perhaps makes inevitable, the scenario where any homeowner encountering more than one burglar can shoot one of them and rest comfortably in the knowledge that the other will rot away for 50 years - albeit at a monetary cost borne by him and his neighbours. What’s a year in prison cost? $50K? So, over two million bucks (and one dead kid) all for a burglary. Great system!
Imagine if the house had been unoccupied, but they’d walked right into the arms of the police when they exited the home. The actions of the burglars were exactly the same in both this hypothetical and the real situation with the armed homeowner.
Why would the sentence be different in the two cases, when the perpetrator’s actions and intent are identical and the entire difference was one beyond their control? Perhaps we should use slot machines instead of judges.
It makes you think it would be cheaper and more efficient to shoot all of them. Or perhaps the people should not engage in robbery. Either way, let justice be done though the heavens fall. The cost is irrelevant.
The middle sentence. Robbers (burglars, technically, in this case, though I made the same error) don’t need to die for harmony or karma or justice or what-have-you, because burglary is a minor property crime.
And per your quote, they intended to confront and bind the family.
The offenders in the Indiana case didn’t bring a weapon, and didn’t go upstairs where the homeowner was. I see nothing that makes me doubt their claim that the plan was a burglary.
Well, golly-That sounds pretty darn interesting, and maybe you should start another thread about that totally unrelated case. As for me, I think I’m going to try to stay on topic as much as possible.
I think the point is, what starts out as a minor crime (I don’t consider burglary to be a minor crime, but that’s subjective) can escalate to a major one. In this case, it did. Felony murder to be precise. The most reliable way to avoid this, is to not commit burglary. Otherwise, you may get shot and killed or may get sentenced to 50 years in prison. Lesson learned.
I agree 100%. As it happens, a lady who is very dear to me lives in Elkhart, Indiana. What starts out as burglary may well end as something else. We’re dealing with people here have no moral inhibitions against breaking and entering, and theft.
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. It’s not like the law was a big secret, right?
I’ve read something along those lines, about executing for murder but not for attempted murder; aren’t both criminals equally guilty of attempted murder, and it’s mere luck that one happened to kill somebody and the other didn’t?
So the argument is that the appropriate punishment would, in fact, be to put each of 'em in a situation with the same probability of getting killed as when they committed the do-something-that-could-result-in-death crime. You do something that has an eighty percent chance of killing someone? Let’s spin that roulette wheel and give you an eighty percent chance of facing the punishment for murder. You instead do something that has a ninety percent chance? Adjust the odds accordingly.
Except – well, it’s damned hard to figure out the exact probability, right? I mean, yes, at great expense we could put our best minds to work on setting up some kind of analysis that misses it pretty close, and we could run that best-guess simulation a bunch of times to figure out whether it results in death 80% or 90% of the time, and once we’ve done that we’d know how to roll some literal dice and see whether you’re under or over – but, wait, that’s stupid; we’ve already got a perfectly good ‘simulation’ at the correct probability, and it’s the one you rolled the metaphorical dice on by committing that crime in the first place.
Given that seeing the Mother and daughter in the store inspired them to burglary, I’d say that home invasion and rape was their plan from the beginning.
Burglary’s a first degree felony in my jurisdiction. It doesn’t get any less minor than that. Classifying it as purely a property offense as opposed to an invasive and at least quasi-violent crime is also a pretty controversial position, in my experience. I think that it’s easy to imagine a burglary where some kids bust in a basement window and grab some xbox games and view it as basically the same as stealing an unattended car. But burglaries, by and large, are from people’s homes, which, you know, you can’t really be surprised when it turns out are full of the people who live there. Burglaries go terribly fucking wrong all the time; it’s a bad business all the way around. It’s not inevitable that you’re going to end up with terrified people making catastrophic decisions on both ends, but it’s certainly not such a remote possibility that anyone’s allowed to say “I didn’t imagine this could happen!”.
This is not to say that I think that all burglars, and teen burglars at that, should be imprisoned for life. I don’t really believe in imprisonment of that duration basically at all. But I do think it’s an important distinction, if for no other reason than to understand where the other side’s coming from.
I agree with you that the additional sentence is too long (Ten years might be more appropriate), and additionally that retributive justice, in general, is pretty ineffective.
But consider who you are calling kids. 16 or 17 year olds may not be fully adults by law, but a pack of them are more than capable of busting you up. these are not children. Neurologically, one year isn’t going to make a lot of difference, since it does end up taking the brain till 25 or so to mature. How do you treat an aggressive 16 year old felon?
A 16 year old should know that breaking into a house to steal property could result in injury or death or a long prison sentence. To pretend otherwise is silly.
You call them “kids” because it serves your point, but I doubt you would think of them in those terms if they were demanding your wallet at knifepoint.
Of course it’s not justice, and it just shows how absurd laws can get when everyone’s trying to talk tougher on crime than everyone else.
Also, one message it will send is that if you’re committing a crime, and one of your party dies, you may as well kill anyone that would hinder your escape or make a conviction more likely, since you’re on the hook for murder now anyway.
Or, let’s not.
The universe is subject to events outside our control and can be unfair. We aim to make laws however that are fair, and are based on factors such as intent.
