One: 65 years, while long, is not “multiple life sentences.” Two: The 65 years was shortly thereafter reduced to 55 years, though I am not finding any details on why. That 55 years was 30 for felony murder and 25 for burglary and theft (???), consecutively. Three: Body cam shows A’Donte Washington charging the officer with a drawn weapon, so this does not appear to be a case of abuse of force. Four: A later court changed those to run concurrently, making it an effective 30 years. In this hearing, the victim’s own father made a statement that Smith did not deserve to be charged with his son’s death. Five: This screenshot is dated less than a week after the original sentencing.
Other notes: There were five teens involved in this burglary, Smith was the only one who did not take a plea deal. The day before this burglary, Smith and others were involved in the murder of another man. The stolen car used in the burglary came from yet another murder. I have to think it was a difficult argument for the defense to make, that Smith “did not intend to hurt anyone.” The prosecution surely had an easier time framing this in terms of “Smith was at least present when someone was murdered the day before [it may have been a short time, hours, since the earlier murder was “around midnight” and I don’t see what time of day the later burglary occurred]. He had to know that continuing to commit crimes with the same group of people could end with death, and still pressed on.”
Whatever your opinion about this situation, you will be better served by presenting it alongside a more complete and accurate respresentation of facts than this screenshot of a tweet contains.
Thank you for this
Whatever your opinion about this situation, you will be better served by presenting it alongside a more complete and accurate respresentation of facts than this screenshot of a tweet contains.
is it possible to fit this level of nuance in a headline?
perhaps reading past the headline is recommended
Have you met people before?
Unfortunately.
It’s possible in a post on Lemmy but OP wasn’t about to do that.
Just included links to help the POS.
Thanks for the context but a court shouldn’t be considering things they haven’t been convicted for unless it’s part of the matter before the court.
Also it doesn’t matter if the police shooting was justified. Charging this guy with the police shooting is, and always has been, fucked up.
65 years is 3 life sentences in the normal world. That’s not a normal sentence for burglary outside authoritarian countries.
a court shouldn’t be considering things they haven’t been convicted for unless it’s part of the matter before the court.
They didn’t consider it in the trial to determine his innocence or guilt, which carries a reasonable doubt standard. They considered it at sentencing, which falls under a an abuse of discretion standard. Basically anything can be relevant at sentencing. It’s up the the judge to weigh the evidence, and the judge must give appropriate weight to uncharged crimes (probably not much, certainly not as much as convicted crimes). Ever read a pre sentencing report? It’s the convict’s entire life story. All of it gets considered. Should the court not consider whether someone has a family or deep community ties because they weren’t convicted have having a family or deep community ties?
A rigid sentencing rubric that allows no discretion, to me, is the fascist approach to sentencing.
This sentence seems long for the kid’s age, but that’s Alabama. Vote.
A rigid sentencing rubric that allows no discretion, to me, is the fascist approach to sentencing.
For lesser crimes, I can agree, but felony stuff. I think it should be more rigid.
It’s the felony murder rule. You intend the foreseeable consequences of your actions. Police shooting your accomplice in an armed robbery is certainly a foreseeable consequences of armed robbery. It’s one of the reasons doing armed robberies is illegal.
Police shooting your accomplice in an armed robbery is certainly a foreseeable consequences of armed robbery.
I don’t understand why that is being equated with murder though. If I would have forced my accomplice into the life threatening situation that got them killed, sure, I would be guilty of their death; but if we assume that they went along willingly how can I get blamed that they got themselves in the situation where (someone else!) killed them?
You shared the intent to do the crime, including all its foreseeable consequences.
Criminal liability criminalizes the forming bad intentions (conspiracy and attempt, inchoate crimes) and the bad action of advancing those intention (completed crimes, choate crimes; robbery, murder).
Felony murder liability says: don’t do that (don’t conspire to do a felony that may likely kill someone and which then did kill someone).
The death arose from the shared bad intent, so the consequences are fairly shared. That’s the theory. I know some people who find this rule controversial. I find it controversial as applied, sometimes, but not in theory. It’s the economics of the rule. Can’t have people hatching dangerous conspiracies to do felonies.
If you commit a felony and during which someone dies, it’s felony murder. Even if you did nothing wrong except whatever felony
Yeah, we’re asking if that’s moral? We already have laws about being party to a murder or conspiracy to murder. Why do we need to automatically extend liability?
That’s the law, but is is actually just?
Oh look someone with a Pro-Genocide tag shows up to defend charging people for the violence committed against them.
Such surprise.
Ridiculous. Go touch grass, honestly. “Pro genocide.” You’re so gullible and reactionary. Such a surprise your media literacy is such utter dogshite.
Your name is rather distinctive. But just to make sure I didn’t forget about your shilling for Israeli Apartheid and War Crimes I added a tag. So yeah I’m not surprised you’re in favor of charging people with murder for the police shooting their friends.
But just to make sure I didn’t forget about your shilling for Israeli Apartheid and War Crimes I added a tag.
Thats churlish. You can’t handle disagreeing with someone?
Why not just say: “I haven’t figured out how to handle my emotions yet”?
No I can disagree with people just fine. But I don’t tolerate the presence of people who use propaganda to defend the most blatant and horrendous war crimes. It’s the same as tolerating the presence of a neo Nazi. For the record Israel hit another IDP camp this week, the EU and Human Rights Watch have said Israel is using starvation as a weapon against the Palestinian people, and now 7 of our allies are restricting or refusing arms sales to Israel.
Furthermore I mean what I said above literally. I am not surprised to find a defender of all of that coming here to defend the felony murder rule being used when the police did the killing.
Or, and this just struck me, are you saying my shit memory for people means I’m churlish?
You only reveal your failure to understand my position. Again, sorry I can’t dumb it down for you any further, the subject inherently complex.
Your position isn’t complex. It’s just reprehensible.
Why are you always mean when people disagree with you? I noticed this a lot. You always claim that you can’t dumb it down further to someone else. Strange mechanism to defend your opinion.
Pretty much guaranteed that when you see a ‘shocking’ headline, that there’s context that makes it make a lot more sense that’s either being obscured or obfuscated.
I hate sensationalism so much.
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Here’s another one:
1 you shouldn’t be charged with a murder you didn’t commit.
I feel like that one is super important here.
A lot of people here are discovering felony murder for the first time.
Also seems to be a lack of understanding that just cause you didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean you didn’t help create the scenario where a trigger got pulled.
I’m not sure I agree with all instances of felony murder (like when it’s an accomplice who dies), but the general notion is you participated in the events that lead to this person’s death.
I think the problem is the sentencing can get out of hand.
In this case 30 years is still more than most other countries would give, but its not outrageous like america usually is.
Based on what I was reading, I think they may have thrown the book at all of them because this was the third incident (possibly murder?) this group was involved in that week.
Yeah and it was appealed down as far as sentencing went. Wild story isnt it. Not what I would choose as an example of a miscarriage of justice.
Lets say I along with a number of others bought drugs from a dude who used that money to buy more drugs to sell and some of those drugs killed someone.
Is everyone that bought from them responsible?
You’ve got a break in events (going to buy more drugs). However, if you buy someone drugs and they die from them you can be found culpable!
Body cam shows A’Donte Washington charging the officer with a drawn weapon,
Unsurprisingly there’s no footage of this other person in that link. Not that that would justify putting an innocent person in a cage.
There were five teens involved in this burglary, Smith was the only one who did not take a plea deal.
Why would anyone take a plea deal for a murder that they didn’t commit? The real problem here is this scam of forcing people into plea deals by threatening them with insane punishments in a fundamentally unjust system. It’s gross when people act like refusing a “deal” is some kind of guilt. It’s mostly likely the opposite.
The day before this burglary…
That’s irrelevant to the cop murdering this kid.
… Smith and others were involved in the murder of another man.
Even if this were relevant, did this even happen? Your article is from 2016 says nothing about Lekeith being convicted.
More generally it’s amazing how “normal” people are brainwashed enough to post this kind of copaganda word salad.
There’s no “opinion” here. Teenagers shouldn’t be convicted for murders committed by cops. It’s that simple.
