Man Fatally Shoots Burglar

[Jered]

I want to agree, but it smacks of "The State" catching you post facto or any way they can. That is a very slippery slope, in my book.

IMHO IINAL...It doesn't seem "post facto" as they still have to prove you were involved in the crime. If somedood asks choirboy for a lift to the liquor store and then decides to hold it up, without informing choirboy it would not be felony murder. If there is evidence that choirboy had knowledge of the hold up or participated he is an accomplice and complicit in anything that transpires, basically he helped get somedood ventilated.

And that's why I don't pick up hitchhikers.

[Netpackrat]

If somedood asks choirboy for a lift to the liquor store and then decides to hold it up, without informing choirboy it would not be felony murder. If there is evidence that choirboy had knowledge of the hold up or participated he is an accomplice and complicit in anything that transpires, basically he helped get somedood ventilated.

Looked at the right way, choirboy could be considered to have performed a public service.

[Erik]

I want to agree, but it smacks of "The State" catching you post facto or any way they can. That is a very slippery slope, in my book.

IMHO IINAL...It doesn't seem "post facto" as they still have to prove you were involved in the crime. If somedood asks choirboy for a lift to the liquor store and then decides to hold it up, without informing choirboy it would not be felony murder. If there is evidence that choirboy had knowledge of the hold up or participated he is an accomplice and complicit in anything that transpires, basically he helped get somedood ventilated.

There's another side to fellony murder too. Consider a scenario where two people break into a house where an elderly man lives. The man ends up beaten to death, and both men can be proven to have been in the house at the time, and both have beaten the man. There's no evidence of who actually held the weapon that killed the man. Both tell the same story "I was in another room stealing stuff when he was killed and didn't know he was dead when I left the house". Without felony murder none of them can be convicted for the murder, only for breaking and entering and assault.
Might sound like a made up scenario, but it's not. That is an actual case from Sweden some years ago. Neither of them was ever convicted of the murder, simply because it could not be proven who made the death blow.

There's actually a Swedish movie, "The Hunters", that has this as a plot element. Five guys shoot a sixth guy with their hunting rifles at the same time, claiming they thought he was a moose. And since forensics cant tell which bullet actually killed the guy, none of them can be prosecuted for murder.