Legislation is being developed in Harrisburg that would rewrite the state’s law on homicide, and revise centuries of legal thinking about the crime, to the dismay of the Chester County District Attorney.
Last week, state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17th, of King of Prussia, announced that he was beginning to draft a proposal to eliminate the crime of second-degree murder, also known as “felony murder,” from Pennsylvania law.
Under current law, if a person is involved as an accomplice in any felony, and someone is killed during the commission of that felony, the person can be found guilty of second-degree murder, even if they did not commit the actual killing and were unaware that anyone would be or even could be killed.
In other words, if more than one person is involved in the perpetration of a felony, each person involved is legally responsible for a criminal homicide that occurs as a result, according to Leach’s office. A guilty verdict for second-degree murder requires a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
The proposal is not yet complete, and Leach’s announcement did not explain what the felony-murder statue would be replaced with. But Leach, who is the Democratic minority leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a cosponsorship memo to his Senate colleagues to explain his proposal and ask for their support.
“The felony murder statute has resulted in unjust and even absurd results,” he said. “For example, a getaway driver who thinks his friend is just going to grab the cash out of the register at a convenience store while the getaway driver waits inside the car, and does not know his friend has a gun or that he intends to shoot anyone, is guilty of murder if his friend kills someone in the store.
“This is true even though the getaway driver never entered the store,” Leach’s press release stated. He suggested that there have been cases where the person who actually kills someone is punished less than the accomplice who did not kill, but gave no specifics.
In 2013, a Phoenixville teenager was convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of a man she and two friends intended to rob. The teenager, Monique Robinson,, who was sentenced to life in prison, did not wield the murder weapon in the killing. The man who did was sentenced to 40 to 80 years in state prison for third-degree murder and robbery. He had entered a plea agreement to testify against Robinson.
District Attorney Thomas Hogan responded swiftly to Leach’s proposal.
‘It sounds like Senator Leach has been smoking marijuana again, as he did when he took a tax-payer funded trip to Colorado to “examine” the issue of legalizing marijuana,” Hogan said in an email. (Leach, a proponent of marijuana decriminalization, acknowledged smoking the drug when he visited Colorado in August 2014.)
“Second-degree murder, the felony murder law, exists to deter and hold people responsible when a homicide is caused in part because of their behavior, Hogan stated. “Imagine a group of five criminals planning to rob a grocery store. One is the master-mind, one supplies the guns, one drives the car, and the other two actually conduct the robbery. During the robbery, three innocent civilians are killed. All five criminals are responsible for those murders and should be prosecuted for second-degree murder. The families of those three victims would agree.”
‘Would Senator Leach prefer that the driver only be prosecuted for illegally parking in a loading zone?’ the prosecutor continued. “Senator Leach and his cohorts are selling a false narrative to hide the fact that they are soft on crime. Proposals like this lead to increased violence and homicide rates. Homicide rates are rising around the United States, and bad ideas such as this will only make that problem worse.”
(Homicides rose in 2015 in America’s top 10 big cities, but stayed relatively the same across the nation as a whole, according to reports.)
But defense attorneys in the county expressed support for Leach’s proposal, saying that it made common sense. The mandatory nature of the punishment, as well, took sentencing matters out of the hands of judges that might look more realistically at the role an accomplice played in a felony that turned into murder, they said..
“I agree with the senator on this,” said defense attorney Evan Kelly of West Chester, a former county prosecutor. “For second-degree murder, there is no intent requirement that an accused has to have in regards to committing murder. It is simply, if in the course of committing a felony, someone dies as a result of an act taken by you or your co-defendant. So now you will now spend the rest of your life in prison.
He noted that judges would be better able to weigh what a proper punishment would be for someone convicted as an accomplice in a homicide, calling the current law “absurd.” “Even if the judge thinks that it the co-defendant never intended or wanted a murder to occur, he still has to sentence an accused to life in prison without parole. I think we need to give our judges discretion to do the right thing when it comes to sentencing. Judges are good people and elected.”
Another defense attorney, Alexander Silow of West Chester, also agreed with Leach’s proposal..
“With the passage of this bill it would eliminate individuals being subjected to mandatory life in jail for a crime that one did not commit let alone even contemplate occurring,” Silow said. “Pennsylvania has moved away from mandatory sentences in the last several years and this bill reflects that trend.
Hogan said the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association would address Leach’s proposal at its meeting next month. “On my behalf and on behalf of the other District Attorney’s that I have spoken to, we are adamantly opposed to this dangerous recommendation,” he said.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
