A state Senate panel reviewed Tennessee’s law on criminal responsibility — especially felony murder — in a session Thursday that included gut-wrenching personal testimony, expert explanation, and personal sniping amongst Shelby County lawmakers.
Criminal responsibility means you can be held liable for a crime committed by someone else even if you just helped them. In felony murder, a type of criminal responsibility, you can be charged with murder even if you’re just the get-away driver (or aided in the crime in another way) and did not commit the murder yourself.
“An example I hear often is a young person is driving a vehicle,” said state Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis). “They know that their friend is gonna go in there and possibly rob the store. But they have no knowledge that (their friend is) going to commit murder. So, the person goes in, commits murder, and the driver is also charged with murder …”
Akbari carried legislation to change Tennessee’s law on felony murder in the last session of the Tennessee General Assembly. The bill would have allowed individuals to be held accountable only for “their own actions.” The bill failed.
“We’re not trying to stop someone from being punished,” Akbari said Thursday. “If they commit a crime, they should be punished. But aligning the punishment with the crime, that’s our goal.”
But state Sen. Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) suggested the idea get a thorough review in the legislature’s off-season in “summer study” hearing. No votes are taken in these meetings. But information shared in them can help to inform legislation and votes in coming sessions.
Roberts said his interest in the topic came after visits with inmates at Nashville’s Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as the Tennessee Prison for Women. He said he heard from many there that “I was young. I was dumb. I was in the car when he killed someone and I didn’t know he was going to kill someone.” Some of these women, he said, were charged and convicted of felony murder and offered a deal of 10 to 15 years in prison or risk trial and possibly serve for life.
“People spending 15 or 20 years in jail because they were in proximity to someone who did something they were not expecting them to do is a legitimate policy question,” Roberts said. “Is that what we want to do?”
Roberts response came after state Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said the bill was a “solution looking for a problem,” a derisive phrase often used by lawmakers to claim a bill is overthought, goes too far, or is partisan beyond everyday usefulness. Taylor also said the entire hearing Thursday was a “waste of time.”
This drew the ire of state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) who asked the committee to be “respectful” and said “all our bills are very respectful.”
“I am elected to this body just like everybody else,” Taylor returned. “I get to say whatever it is that I want to say. If people don’t like it, I am sorry. … If other members could refrain from commenting on what I have to say, that would be great.”
Powerful testimony ended the hearing from a group of women who have experienced repercussions of Tennessee’s felony murder law first-hand, either as one who has been sentenced with it or who has a loved one who has. The five women who spoke Thursday united under the name “Separate Acts Separate Facts Coalition.”
Ashlee Sellars said she was 17 when an adult man she was staying with murdered Cynthia Page, a 23-year-old college student at the University of Tennessee. The man asked Sellars to drive him to a church, was gone for awhile, and came back later with a purse and money bag. While he was gone, he’d robbed the restaurant that Page managed, killed her, and took her purse.
Page was not present at the killing, nor did she have any previous knowledge of it. But she did not call police because, she said, of a mistrust of authorities stemming from a childhood of physical and sexual abuse with no help from law enforcement.
”The state aggressively prosecuted me, implying my involvement because I did not call law enforcement,” she told lawmakers. ”No one considered the ‘why …why I did not call them.’ [But] under Tennessee’s felony murder and criminal responsibility statute, I was prosecuted and convicted. Beginning at the age of 17, I spent over 21 years in prison, my first two in solitary confinement.”
Erin Twomey from the Council of State Governments told lawmakers that Louisiana law identifies intent when prosecuting these crimes. It outlines “criminal responsibility for the conduct of another” and differentiates between “specific intent” and “general intent.” If Tennessee did this, prosecutors would have to prove that intent in the crime as well as an offender’s mental state.
Stephen D. Crump, executive director of the Tennessee District Attorney General Conference, said he was there to oppose repealing and amending Tennessee’s law.
“These laws are not abstract doctrines,” Crump said. “They are practical, time-tested tools that protect Tennesseans, deter violent crimes, and hold all violent actors accountable.”
Crump explained that proponents of change champion the phrase “different acts, separate facts” which he said “ignores the reality of violent crime.” He said that both parties share responsibility when a crime is committed.
“In the real world the robbery doesn’t happen without the driver, the lookout, the planner, or the gun supplier,” Crump said. “Crime is often a team sport.”