Felony Murder: Charging black teens for their friend’s death is a crime
--
Last Sunday, during our church’s Family and Friends service in Waukegan’s Hinkley Park, I found myself engaged in a conversation that’s lit Cook and Lake counties ablaze with opinions. Last week, five teenagers drove to a North Shore suburb with the alleged intent of burglarizing. As they walked up one driveway, they were confronted by the 75-year-old homeowner, who ultimately fired shots and killed the youngest of the teens. After a high-speed chase that ended in Chicago, the remaining five were brought into custody. Following these events, the Lake County State’s Attorney saw fit to charge the four African American teenagers with murder under Illinois’ felony murder rule. The homeowner is not currently facing any charges.
Straight and to the point, I was asked, “Pastor, what do you think about everything that happened last week — those four kids trying to rob the house then going on that chase to Chicago?” Well, here goes …
The foundations for felony murder originate in England from early common law practices made official criminal law in the early 1500s. In two cases, Lord Dacres’ and Mansell and Herbert’s, a single member of a group committed actions that resulted in the death of an innocent bystander. The associates of the guilty individual were charged with homicide under the justification that, “an unintended person [was] the recipient of the violent act.” It is perplexing how rules like this (and others like civil asset forfeiture) created hundreds of years ago, initially levied against aristocrats in a country we sought independence from, have a strange way of persisting for centuries and directly impacting specific demographics of people in our current society.
It is important to note that in the Mansell and Herbert’scase, the verdict originally used the word “homicide.” Later, however, British commentators made two significant alterations: in 1619, Michael Dalton added the word “felony” and, in 1644, Lord Dalton replaced “homicide” with“murder,” changes that persist into the present-day automatic first-degree murder conviction for felony class activity under the felony murder law. In 1827, 44 years after the American Revolution, Illinois became the first state to pass a felony murder statute based on those standards. And this version of the…
