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What makes a murder?
Generally, murder involves the intent to harm someone. You have to mean to kill the victim. But a legal doctrine known as felony murder allows a murder charge against someone who wasn’t directly involved in the killing. One example comes from Oklahoma. In 2017, Elizabeth Rodriguez drove her boyfriend and two others to a house in Broken Arrow. She waited in the car while the boys broke in. The 23-year-old son of the homeowner fired on the boys, killing all three. Rodriquez was charged with three counts of murder because she drove them to the home knowing they were going to break in (and possibly telling them to). She pleaded guilty and is currently serving three concurrent 32-year sentences.
There’s no question that she drove the boys to the house—it was their second time to burglarize that particular residence—or that two of them were armed. It’s reasonable to assume in Oklahoma that a homeowner could be armed and willing to resist a burglary with violence. So it was completely foreseeable that someone could be injured or killed during the burglary. Rodriguez should have known of the risk.
I don’t have a huge problem with the basic idea of felony murder charges, especially under circumstances like this particular case. But what happens when the person who’s charged was in police custody at the time of the death? Literally sitting in handcuffs in a police car?
In 2012, Sadik Baxter and O’Brian Oakley were breaking into cars when one owner started caught them. Baxter surrendered to the cops, but Oakley fled in his car, eventually crashing into two bicyclists, killing both of them. Authorities charged Oakley with two counts of first-degree felony murder and two counts of vehicular homicide.
So was Baxter, even though he was miles away, cuffed in the back of a police car.
There’s no question in my mind that Oakley should have been charged with vehicular homicide. He shouldn’t have run from the cops. His actions directly led to the deaths of two people.
But how did Baxter contribute to the deaths of Dean Amelkin and Christopher McConnell?
Could Sadik Baxter have reasonably foreseen that Oakley would flee from the cops, get hit by another car, and crash into two innocent people? If not, then he shouldn’t be charged, I think.
Sarah Stillman at The New Yorker took a closer look at the concept of felony murder and how it’s applied in various states. The results are troubling. In some states, Blacks are 23 to 39 times more likely to be convicted of felony murder than whites. The Felony Murder Reporting Project lists almost two dozen cases where people were charged with felony murder because police officers killed someone. I’m not suggesting that none of those cases warranted charges because I haven’t read up on all the cases. But I’m certainly curious about the stories behind each case. I can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea of charging one person for the actions of another who was killed by a cop. Read Stillman’s story here: Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away | The New Yorker (archive.ph)
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Previously Published on Bob Mueller Writer and is republished on Medium.
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