Break-in suspect charged with murder after accomplice is shot by homeowner

It is murder.

depending on the geographic location of the event. Some states have redefined the word murder to include that, some have not. The traditional legal definition of murder is:

the killing of a human being by a sane person, with intent, malice aforethought and with no legal excuse or authority.

That did not happen in this case. The death should result in a penalty enhancement however convicting someone of a crime they did not commit or intend to commit is a dangerous direction. Politicians shouldn't be redefining English words to mean something completely different.

But the people commiting the crime did so as a group. They are each responsible for their own or other deaths that resulted in any way from their criminal acts.

If they hadn't commited the crime, nobody would have been shot.

It's all very clear to me.

Murder is just your basic "unlawful killing", and taking a guy along with you to commit a crime, and then he gets shot, seems to me to be "unlawful killing" on your part, if not on the part of the shooter.

You really gotta' look beyond the problem of who has the gun. Knowingly taking someone into what you can reasonably expect to be a field of fire is just the same as shooting him yourself.

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong. Or at least being too simplistic -- the law is not simple. That's why lawyers go to school for 3 years and then have to practice for awhile before they know very much. When you're on trial for your life, you grasp at every straw, and this problem was dealt with almost 400 years ago.

The doyen of English common-law, Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke (and that's pronounced "cook" - usual English muddle about names), 1552-1634, gave this definition:

There must be, lst. Sound mind and memory in the agent. By this is understood there must be a will, and legal discretion. 2. An actual killing, but it is not necessary that it should be caused by direct violence; it is sufficient if the acts done apparently endanger life, and are eventually fatal. (Emphasis supplied.)

It's not an exaggeration to say that Coke's writings (which glossed and expanded on those of 15th c. judge Sir Thomas Littleton) were the foundation of English common law, which is of course the foundation of our system.

So except to the extent that judges in England were also "politicians" (and they always are, to some extent), it was the judges who made the English common law who came up with a definition of murder that includes felony-murder.

That's impressive, interesting, and informative research! You've taken the debate to the Supreme Court level. If the tradition is 400 years old then it's certainly valid.

For murdering a thug maybe they should get some kind of penalty reduction for lowering community costs and strife.

Thanks! (I'm in the business . . . )

Generally these things ARE evened out in sentencing. That's why judges have broad discretion in sentencing. It isn't always a good thing (if you have a crazy judge), but the cure for that is to throw the crazy judge out at the next election, not prevent judges from using common sense and experience to set a sentence.

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