Felony Murder: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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We're gonna dive straight in with our main story this week, which concerns murder. You know, the thing... the thing that cats are constantly plotting. Cats... only want two things, fancy feasts, chicken pâté, and the slow, painful death of their enemies.

Murder is also, in a sense, what this singer did to the national anthem last year during an election debate for third- party candidates.

And the rockets' red glare. I fucked it up.

I fucked it up.

Can I go back?

Can I go back, please?

A bomb bursting in air. I got too nervous. Gave proof through the night That our flag was still there

♪ Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

Excellent. Rest in peace to the national anthem. Now, was that tough to watch? Yes, it was. But does the fact that Jill Stein had to stand there listening to it make it a little better? Apps are fucking looped. Now, specifically, this story concerns something called

felony murder, which I know sounds redundant. After all, aren't all murders technically felonies? But it's a particular type of charge, as this local news segment chose to explain with some odd framing.

Felony murder is not the pre-planned, made-for-TV murder you might be thinking.

So...

-♪ Oh, yeah! -♪ -♪ Oh, yeah! ♪

WTF is felony murder? Well, felony murder allows anyone involved in a dangerous crime to be charged with murder if someone is killed during that crime. So even if the person didn't actually kill someone, they can still get charged. So let's say you're the getaway car driver

for a bank robbery, and your accomplice panics and kills the bank teller. You can be charged with murder without even stepping into the bank building or having a gun or pulling the trigger.

That is honestly a pretty good explanation, albeit with a very distracting intro. and for sure, goof it up to the max, but not if the subject is serious. The last thing any viewer wants to see is that graphic, followed by a reporter saying, so, WTF is the age of consent. But... to reiterate, felony murder is basically a felony plus a death

equals a murder charge, even if you didn't intend to kill anyone, and even if you are not the one who did the killing. And as you'll see, these charges can go way further than just getaway drivers in bank robberies, because crucially, you don't have to be

an active participant in a killing to get charged with felony murder. You don't even have to be anywhere near it. Take what happened when these four men broke into a house in Florida to steal a safe. When someone there tried to stop them,

one of them beat her to death. But under felony murder, all four were charged with her killing, as well as this guy. And I'll let him explain why.

I'm in prison because I loaned my keys to my roommate.

It was 2003, the morning after a party

at his house in Pensacola.

He said, can I borrow your keys to your car? And I said, sure.

He went back to sleep. Holly says when he woke up and his car wasn't back, he called his roommate who said they were about to

break in. If I would have really have taken it serious, I would have called

the police. But under florida's felony murder rule, holly was just as responsible as the man who killed Snyder. Holly, like the other four men was sentenced to life without parole.

to lending his car for the burglary.

Because under felony murder, all they have to prove is someone committed or aided in a felony that led to a death.

In fact, 11 states in the federal system

the numbers are astonishing. That's over a thousand in each state. as an easier way to get a conviction in many, many others, they weren't.

for felony murder were not proven to have killed anyone. it actually came from England. Instead, it's doubled down and hard. a distinctly American innovation. Like the 1971 Minnesota statute that says, and this is true,

in a contest, game, or other like activity

when a group of five unarmed young men, four of them teens, broke into a house in the afternoon to burglarize it, believing no one was at home at the time. Now, unfortunately, the homeowner was actually asleep upstairs, and he grabbed his handgun,

came downstairs, and began firing his weapon, killing one of them. Now, the four teens survived only to then be charged with felony murder in the death of their friend, which they still cannot quite believe.

I didn't really comprehend it. I didn't put my mind around what I was really about to go through. To me, we all should be charged for what we done that day, but nobody committed murder, so why should we be charged with it?

I committed burglary, you know?

Serious things did happen. Danzel burglar, you know? Serious things did happen. Danzel's gone, you know? I mean, I'm not saying I don't know his time.

The trial lasted just four days. The teenagers were all found guilty of an adult crime. 17-year-old Levi was sentenced to 50 years in prison. 16-year-old Blake and 18-year-old Anthony Sharp each got 55 years.

Look, I know they started things by trying to rob the house, but it's a bit of a stretch to go from that to five decades in prison for a killing that someone else committed. At a certain point, assigning an outcome to a chain of causation no longer makes sense.

It is why, when the Oscar for Best Actor was awarded last year, it was given to Cillian Murphy and not to his parents, whose hot Irish sex led to his existence. The fact is, felony murder can be applied in an astonishingly broad array of circumstances.

There are stories of people being charged with it after doing drugs next to friends who OD'd, or in the wake of a robbery where a frightened victim died of a heart attack afterward without having been struck or injured by the robbers. And take what happened to Lakeith Smith.

When he was 15, he was robbing a house in Alabama with several friends, and one of them got shot. But he refused to plead guilty to felony murder for a reason that, when you hear him explain it to a reporter, it's pretty understandable.

Can you tell me why didn't you take that plea deal? I knew I ain't do it, like, I'm not gonna... cop out for no 25 years for a murder I ain't do. And the people who did it, they got free, like... You said the people who did it, what do you mean?

The police.

They got free, like, the one who pulled the trigger and killed them.

Yeah, his friend was shot by a cop, and yet Lakeith got 65 years in prison. Which doesn't feel like justice, does it? And his mom sums up the absurdity of that situation pretty well.

He should have got the proper time for the crime that he committed. The burglary and the stolen property. To 65 years, on a young guy, 15, who didn't kill no one. Didn't kill no one and didn't shoot at no one.

Alabama. -♪ ♪ -♪ Yep.

Exactly. I honestly couldn't say it better. In fact, at this point, I'd argue Alabama's official state motto should probably just be an entirely derogatory,

-"Yep." -♪

-♪ and fairly derogatory, yup. But while Smith refused a plea deal, many don't. And that's actually one of the big hidden ways this charge can send people to prison, because prosecutors can use the threat of a huge sentence under felony murder to get people to plea down to lesser charges.

It's one reason why felony murder's being called one of those quiet drivers of mass incarceration we never acknowledge. And it is just incredible to find out something most people have never even heard of is propelling an issue as prominent as mass incarceration. It's like learning most heart attacks occur

due to people chasing greased up pigs for sport. So, that would at least explain why there's a fucking law in Minnesota against it. And while nobody knows exactly how many plea deals were obtained under the threat of a felony murder sentence, some who've taken one have since spoken out.

Like Kevin Reese. He pled to aiding and abetting second-degree murder after he participated in a robbery when he was a teenager, and one of his accomplices ended up killing someone. And here he is explaining his decision to take that plea.

I had two choices. My choice was either go to trial, and the trial, according to felony murder, I wasn't going to win because the threshold to prove someone's guilt for felony murder is so low. Only thing they had to prove was that I was there, right?

And it was known fact. I was never saying I wasn't there. I was saying I didn't do it. And my other choice was take a plea for 22 years and go do 15 years in Minnesota correctional facilities. I had to rationalize this in my 18-year-old brain.

I had to, like, almost rationalize, okay, maybe somehow I deserve this. I had to literally say, will and rationalize taking 22 years instead of getting life.

That is horrible. Because normally, when people are forced to choose the least bad option, it just means that they resign themselves to having lunch at a Cracker Barrel. Look, when you're on the highway and the other options

are places like Sata IHOP, Mystery Meat Buffet, One-Way Ticket to the Toilet, and Homophobic Wendy's, then unfortunately, Denny's with Confederate vibes is gonna be your least bad option. But despite making the pragmatic choice, it had huge impact on Kevin, both practical and emotional.

All of the programs inside of the corrections facilities, like it's about cognitive behavior, criminality, all of that thinking. So you be in spaces where you have to lead with, I am Kevin, I'm a murderer, right? You have to lead with that.

But each time that I had to lead with that, where I'm a murderer, it's really easy to get bitter, right? It's really easy to have a lot of distrust and disdain for the system in itself. And it also feels very much like being kidnapped.

It feels very much like being kidnapped, because you like, the crime, like what you did and why you're there, there's a disconnect, right? So each time you look at your paperwork and it says the big red M, murder on there, you cringe.

I'm really here for murder. I'm really here for murder.

Yeah, that sounds incredibly frustrating. If they're gonna reduce someone's life to a big red M for murder, the very least they could do is then add a smaller red, but you know, not literally, it's just a weird legal quirk. Just Google felony murder if you want to know the deal. Shit's insane!

And since felony murder involves the U.S. criminal justice system, you're probably already assuming it's applied disproportionately to non-white people. But the thing is, you'll be shocked to learn that white people are actually far more likely to face prison compared to... Just kidding, of course it's applied disproportionately to non-white people. In fact, even within the context of the American justice system,

the extent to which that is true is shocking. In New York, in cases where people were convicted of felony murder as accomplices, so where they were not charged with killing anyone, Hispanic people were about 12 times as likely as white people to be convicted,

and black people were more than 34 times as likely. In Wisconsin, where black individuals account for less than seven percent of the population, they make up 76 percent of those incarcerated for felony murder. And in St. Louis, a city whose population is slightly less than 50 percent black,

every single felony murder conviction between 2010 and 2022, a total of 47 people, was of a black person. And very few things are 100 percent black people. Not even, as we now know thanks to Rachel Dolezal, the Spokane, Washington NAACP.

But there's another group on which this law has disproportionate impacts, because a lot of the people you've seen so far were in their teens when their crimes happened, and that is not a coincidence. Young people are more likely to commit crimes in groups and are more impulsive than adults.

In fact, felony murder has been described as the quintessential juvenile crime capitalizing on the developmental vulnerabilities of adolescents. That is why it sends a lot of people in their teens and 20s to prison,

and often for decades. At one point in Pennsylvania, nearly three quarters of those serving life without parole for felony murder were 25 or younger at the time of their offense. And look, there are certain places you do expect to find a teenager.

A high school, an Olivia Rodrigo concert, in Matt Gaetz's texting history. But it is shocking to see so many locked in prison for felony murder. Just take Almir Nance. He was only 16 when he participated

in the armed robbery of a Tennessee radio shack, during which another person shot and killed a store employee. Even though Nance was not the one who pulled the trigger, he was given a mandatory sentence of 51 years. And even one of the jurors from his trial was horrified when she learned about his sentence.

Do you remember how you felt when you heard

this 51-year minimum sentence?

I was stunned, shocked. You know, a life was taken, and that is a terrible tragedy. A great injustice to the victim, to his family, and to all the people whose the ripples of his life would have gone out to for generations. But taking Elmir's life,

when he had just started it and wasn't even informed into who he was gonna become yet,

really I felt horrified.

And I feel like I... followed the instructions. But... the law wasn't just. And I regret being a participant in that injustice.

Of course, if you follow the instructions, only to learn that a teenager is getting sent to prison for half a century, that has got to be the worst jury duty experience ever followed closely in a thousand-way tie with all other jury duty experiences.

So to recap here, felony murder is a law almost no other country uses. It harshly punishes people for killings they didn't commit, and it disproportionately impacts the non-white and the young. So, what on earth is the argument for it? Well, some try to argue that it works as a deterrent

against criminal behavior. When Colorado was in the process of amending its felony murder law, this state senator strongly opposed the change.

Felony murder just, uh, as a concept, uh, ensured that people are not going to, uh, be cavalier about, um, who they hang out with and what those people are doing.

Okay, so a couple of things. First, maybe back up from your camera just a bit. And second, while it is nice to think felony murder could be a deterrent, there is little evidence of that. In fact, a task force in Minnesota concluded

that the existence of the charge does not deter behavior and does not reduce the risk of re-offense, which does make sense, doesn't it? It is hard for something to be a deterrent if no one knows about it. Think of felony murder laws like Apple TV shows. Sure, there are tons of them out there,

but most people have no fucking idea they exist. Now, other supporters of the charge argue it's worth it simply to keep would-be criminals off the streets. Here is the sheriff who investigated Almir Nance's case, defending his 50-year sentence.

What would your response be to people who say, this isn't really working, locking people up, doesn't actually solve any problems?

Well, for those who say it doesn't really solve any problems by locking these juveniles up, um, for a long period of time, uh, Almir Nance hadn't been involved in any more violent crimes.

What?! Well, you know what, by that logic, fuck it, just lock everyone up forever. And even as I said that, I've just realized that is definitely now gonna be the official theme of the 2028 actually pretty simple. Just get rid of the felony murder charge.

Every other common law country did that decades ago, and we should too. And to be fair, some states are at least trying to limit it. Minnesota changed its laws so that someone can no longer be charged with murder unless they intended to cause a death

or were a major participant in a murder. And California did something similar, and both states made their changes retroactive, so people convicted of felony murder could ask to be resentenced. And thankfully, after getting media attention,

some convictions have been overturned. The Elkhart Four had their felony murder convictions reversed, and the guy with the car keys had his sentence commuted by Florida's governor. However, Lakeith Smith and Almir Nance are still in prison. And if you are seeing a pattern here,

when someone is killed. But they should be punished for the crime they committed,

and not one they did not intend or indeed carry out themselves.

really doesn't address crime at all. really doesn't address crime at all. for something that they often did not do.