When he was 19, Jamie Meade participated in a robbery that turned lethal. But it was Meade's partner in crime who actually shot the victim (accidentally, he said). Meade nevertheless was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life without parole, while the killer pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and received a 12-year sentence. When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer commuted Meade's sentence last year, he had served 31 years. By contrast, the man who fired the gun, who spent 10 years in prison, has been free since 2008.
Manifestly unjust results like those are a product of laws that treat people as murderers when they participate in felonies that result in someone's death, even when they did not intend, anticipate, or cause that outcome. A new report from the Sentencing Project highlights the perverse effects of the felony murder rule—a vestige of British law that still prevails in federal courts and all but two states nearly seven decades after the U.K. abandoned it.
