If He Didn’t Kill Anyone, Why Is It Murder?

New York Times ^ | June 27, 2018 | Abbie Vansickle

[reaganaut1]

SACRAMENTO — Late in the evening on Jan. 27, 2004, four teenagers broke into an elderly neighbor’s house in the Southern California town of Perris, looking for cash.

One of them, Shawn Khalifa, guarded the back door. Shawn, who had just turned 15, slipped into the kitchen and stole some chocolate candies. He briefly saw that the homeowner was seriously hurt, and he ran back outside.

No one accused Shawn of laying a hand on the victim, Hubert Love, 77, but a jury convicted the teenager of first-degree murder.

Mr. Khalifa, now 29 and serving a sentence of 25 years to life, is one of hundreds of people convicted in California under a legal doctrine known as the felony murder rule, which holds that anyone involved in certain kinds of serious felonies that result in death is as liable as the actual killer.

“I knew I didn’t kill anyone,” Mr. Khalifa said. “I felt and kind of knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. It didn’t seem like there was any room to be a human being again. My life was over.”

But the hard doctrine that sent Mr. Khalifa to prison may be softening. A bill moving through the California Legislature would change state law so that only someone who actually killed, intended to kill or acted as a major player with “reckless indifference to human life” could face murder charges.

...

“Many times in California, if you didn’t commit the murder, didn’t know the murder occurred, you could be charged and have the same sentence as the actual murderer,” said State Senator Nancy Skinner, who introduced the legislation in part because, she said, felony murder cases disproportionately affect women and young black and Latino men.

[Persevero]

I don’t actually think that is too harsh. The young man demonstrated that he is a career criminal for years. These are the ones we can’t have living among us.

I see him as getting life for being a career criminal, not for the $20 incident.

[Vermont Lt]

I suppose he did. Not sure if I blame for that.

I would stay and help because I don’t know any better. In fact I would stay and them them where to find my brother.

But I don’t live in the “hood.”

[Stanwood_Dave]

"DemonicRATS need to be charged in Nuremberg-style trials "

You do know, that because of the Nuremberg-trials, it was that act that gave us some minor Nazi gun laws! How in the world you may be asking, as you read this:

Offer of proof, Nazi gun laws in the United States.

If you agree with the Gun Control Works "EXPERTS" the likes of Castro, Qaddafi, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-ll, and of course the poster boy of the left, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), so favored, they had his German {Nazi} gun laws' translated into English, then enacted, ( The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act (P.L. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213) which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968.) thank you Connecticut's U.S. Senator {1959-1971} Thomas J. Dodd, father of U.S. Senator Chris Dodd D-CT, 1981-2010, this is "Education" at it's best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Dodd

{Thomas Joseph} Dodd was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives in 1952, and served two terms. He lost a Senate election in 1956 to Prescott S. Bush, but was elected in 1958 to Connecticut's other Senate seat and then re-elected in 1964.

In 1967 {Thomas Joseph} Dodd became the first Senator censured by the US Senate since Joseph McCarthy in 1954, and was one of only six people censured by the Senate in the 20th century. The resulting censure was a condemnation and finding that he had converted campaign funds to his personal accounts and spent the money

Occam's razor starts here:

Thomas Joseph Dodd became vice chairman of the Board of Review and later executive trial counsel for the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946.Occam's razor ends here.
He practiced law privately in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1947 to 1953.

U.S. Senator Thomas Joseph Dodd, (May 15, 1907 – May 24, 1971) the father of U.S. Senator {1981 to 2011} for Connecticut, Christopher Dodd. In 1967 [Thomas Joseph] Dodd became the first Senator censured by the US Senate since Joseph McCarthy in 1954, and was one of only six people censured by the Senate in the 20th century.

Occam's razor starts here:

As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, [Thomas Joseph] Dodd worked to restrict the purchase of mail order handguns, and later shotguns and rifles. These efforts culminated in the Gun Control Act of 1968, which {Thomas Joseph} Dodd introduced, including certain registration requirements.

Occam's razor ends here.

Zimring, Franklin E. (1975). "Firearms and Federal Law: The Gun Control Act of 1968". The Journal of Legal Studies. 4 (1): 133. ISSN 0047-2530. Nuremberg Trials

Both Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the U.S., and {Thomas Joseph} Dodd insisted upon a fair and legal trial {in / at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946} to prosecute the Nazi war criminals.

Occam's razor (also Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae "law of parsimony") is the problem-solving principle that, when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the answer that makes the fewest assumptions. The idea is attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian.