this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unsurprisingly there's no footage of this other person in that link. Not that that would justify putting an innocent person in a cage.
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.
That's irrelevant to the cop murdering this kid.
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.
It's really important to know the details because it's the details that allow us to parse and challenge injustice effectively.
Knowing the context of Felony Murder and how it applies to this sentencing is not saying 'this is fine then, no worries'. Rather, it means we can actually talk about the systematic issues in the legal system that enable things like this.
The comment you replied to was in no way 'word salad' or 'copaganda', it was context.
... so this does not appear to be a case of abuse of force. That is the context here, which I made sure to include in the sentence you selectively edited.
So let's be clear here, he was charged with felony murder of his accomplice in a dangerous felony. Felony murder is the crime of killing of a person in the commission of a dangerous crime.
It's pretty debatable if it makes sense to charge someone for felony murder if they were an accomplice, but that's a different discussion than the framing of "charged for a murder committed by cops". The cops didn't murder this guy, it seems pretty clear that the cops acted in self defense here. So it's not like they transferred the "blame" as it were from murderous cops to an innocent kid.
The reason felony murder exists is that even if there was no actual intent to kill, the risk of death during a dangerous crime is so high it becomes reckless. There's a similar crime of depraved heart murder where the act that causes the death of someone is so dangerous that one could only do it if they had no concern of killing someone. You go into a felony knowing someone could get hurt or killed and do it anyway, so you are responsible for the consequences whether you "pulled the trigger" or not. A more common example would be if you and a buddy are robbing a bank and your buddy kills a teller or a cop, you get charged with felony murder.
That's is the felony murder rule. It's a transfered intent doctrine. I don't think the rule itself is very controversial. This isn't even a controversial application of the law except for the length of the sentence and the age of the offender. While those are motivating factors at sentencing, others have posted the many aggravating factors that apply in the case. And while prior convictions and prior arrests aren't relevant at the trial, they are relevant at the sentencing.
The parent comment doesn't appear to be copaganda, or even have a stance one way or the other. The comment is context, which is important for discussing the issue at hand. Because of the context, we should not be discussing police brutality or excessive use of force in this case, we should be discussing the immorality of a justice system which allows someone to be charged with felony murder in the case of an accomplice.
To clarify, if this group of teens broke into a home and shot the homeowner, that would be a justified charge of felony murder for all the accomplices. However, their friend chose to essentially commit suicide by cops, and the convicted was running away at the time. Again, the parent comment did not make any qualifiers on the actions of the cops or anyone else present, they posted context with which other commenters can frame their discussion. Nowhere in their other comments could I discern a pro-cop stance, reading with an objective eye. Reactionary pointing of fingers just discourages future posters from providing context.
Before you accuse me of copaganda as well, ACAB, systemic racism is a huge problem in the US, and our justice system is rigged against the most vulnerable.
We need more people like you.