NOTE: I apologize if this has been done before. A search failed to turn up any results.
Kara Borden is the 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl whose boyfriend killed her parents and then took her along as he fled the crime scene.
Prosecutors are saying that she went with him willingly.
It seems like prosecutors want to charge her with a crime, but I’m not sure what they can get her on. Accessory to Murder would be quite a stretch, since AFAIK all she’s guilty of is being glad her parents are dead. While morally off-putting, we don’t generally prosecute people for though crimes in the US.
Accessory is not the same thing as “accomplice.” You may be confusing the terms.
An accessory is someone who assists in concealing a crime, or assists in the commission of the crime, but does not participate in the actual commission of the crime.
I don’t know what the law is in Pennsylvania. But as a general proposition, a person who assists the criminal in avoiding capture after the crime has been committed is an accessory to the crime. If she so much as went into a convenience store to buy things while on the run, so that he wouldn’t be recognized, she could conceivably be charged as an accessory.
Let’s try:
“Giving aid, comfort, or harboring a fugitive”. Accessory after the fact, mayhaps? A good girlfriend is comforting, although I have reservations as to whether or not this young lady would qualify as a good anything…
Let’s also try working on a supposition that she may have asked him to kill her parents. Not all facts of the case would be known to the public at this time.
The DA could argue that she would NEVER had gone willingly with a man who had killed her parents UNLESS she had requested the killing. If he is right or believes he is right, she’s perilously close to a murder charge herself.
Might not be the direction law enforcement is going, but I’ve seen stupider charges aimed at suspects.
That argument, alone, would be insufficent as a matter of law to convict her of murder.
As to the “giving comfort” language… as a general rule, the aid or comfort prohibited is that which aids the suspect in eluding capture, or frustrates the police in their investigation. Merely saying, “There, there, poor boy,” is unlikely to qualify.
Ms. Fugate participated in the murder spree. For example, Starkweather testified that she was the one that stabbed victim Carol King in the abdomen and pubic areas. She tied Lillian Fencl to a bed and stabbed her to death.
In other words, she wasn’t accused of being an accessory - she was a principal actor in the deaths.
So far as I’m aware, no similar accusation has been made about Ms. Borden’s conduct.
Learn something new every day. I had assumed holding hands would have counted.
How about hot meals?
Letting you crash in my spare bedroom?
Using the downstairs bathroom at my house?