California Legislatures has passed a new bill that Massachusetts lawmakers should look at as a prime example for Criminal Justice Reform.
Similar to Massachusetts, California's original felony-murder doctrine allows a person to be convicted and punished to life in prison for murder, although the person was not at the murder scene or they may have been a getaway driver, a lookout, helped planned a lesser felony, or provided clothes and weapons to the primary participant. In all of these scenario, the person did not intend a death to occur.
California's S.B 1437 bill has changed that law, effecting up to 800 men and women serving life sentences or facing the death penalty. The bill is retroactive and it no longer allows the state to convict a codefendant for someone else's intended crime to murder.
Shawn Khalifa, a California man is a example of how the original felony-murder law is unjust. He stole chocolate from a man's house but had no part in the man's murder, but was sentence to life. With the passing of S.B. 1437, he will now be able to gain his freedom.
In Massachusetts, there are hundreds of men and women serving life sentences under Massachusetts's felony-murder doctrine. Yet majority of them has never committed a violent act.
Under the Commonwealth's general joint venture laws, a defendant cannot be held liable for the additional crimes committed by a co-venturer unless the defendant intended such crimes. However, where the additional crime results in death, the felony murder rule establishes an exception to the rule of joint venture and allows a defendant to be held liable without evidence that the defendant intended to cause the victim's death.
In 2017, Massachusetts highest court refused to abolish the felony murder doctrine, but modified it in Commonwealth v. Brown 477 Mass. 805,. In the Supreme Judicial Court's decision, it now requires prosecutors to prove one of three prongs to be convicted, 1. that he or she intended to kill, 2. to cause bodily harm, 3. intended to do an act which, in the circumstances known to the defendant, a reasonable person would have known it would created a plain and strong likelihood that death would result.
Although the doctrine has been modified, Massachusetts prosecutors are still pursuing murder convictions without evidence of the intent to kill. Prosecutors are arguing the third prong.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also refuses to make the modification of felony murder retroactive. The notion is, it will open a floodgate releasing criminals who are considered killers back on the streets. Though these men and women are not killers. They are people who made the wrong choice, was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and some even backed out from committing the felony but failed to prove it at trial.
Society has a misperception that men and women who are serving life sentences are the most dangerous among the inmate population. A number of studies have shown, inmates who are serving life sentence are role model inmates. They are the least to receive any disciplinary sanctions. If release, they would likely have a low recidivism rate.
Massachusetts refuses to do anything for these men and women, although it is causing millions of taxpayers dollars to keep them incarcerated.
Our Massachusetts leaders need to take a page from California.
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