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Full-Text Articles in Law
Police Killings As Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Ekow Yankah
Police Killings As Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Ekow Yankah
Journal Articles
The widely applauded conviction of officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd employedthe widely criticized felony murder rule. Should we use felony murder as a tool to check discriminatory and violent policing? The authors object that felony murder—although perhaps the only murder charge available for this killing under Minnesota law—understated Chauvin’s culpability and thereby inadequately denounced his crime. They show that further opportunities to prosecute police for felony murder are quite limited. Further, a substantial minority of states impose felony murder liability for any death proximately caused by a felony, even if the actual killer was a police …
Capital Punishment Of Unintentional Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Brenner Fissell, Robert Weisberg
Capital Punishment Of Unintentional Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Brenner Fissell, Robert Weisberg
Journal Articles
Under the prevailing interpretation of the Eighth Amendment in the lower courts, a defendant who causes a death inadvertently in the course of a felony is eligible for capital punishment. This unfortunate interpretation rests on an unduly mechanical reading of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona, which require culpability for capital punishment of co-felons who do not kill. The lower courts have drawn the unwarranted inference that these cases permit execution of those who cause death without any culpability towards death. This Article shows that this mechanical reading of precedent is mistaken, because the …
Making The Best Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
Making The Best Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
Although scorned as irrational by academics, the felony murder doctrine persists as part of our law. It is therefore important that criminal law theory show how the felony murder doctrine can be best justified, and confined within its justifying principles. To that end, this Article seeks to make the best of American felony murder laws by identifying a principle of justice that explains as much existing law as possible, and provides a criterion for reforming the rest. Drawing on the moral intuition that blame for harm is properly affected by the actor’s aims as well as the actor’s expectations, this …
The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
Legal scholars are almost unanimous in condemning felony murder as a morally indefensible form of strict liability. This Article provides the long-missing principled defense of the felony murder doctrine. It argues that felony murder liability is deserved for killing negligently by means of a violent or apparently dangerous felony involving an additional malign purpose independent of physical injury to the victim killed. This claim follows from the simple idea that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one’s reasons for doing so. The article develops this idea into an expressive theory of culpability that assesses blame for …
The Origins Of American Felony Murder Rules, Guyora Binder
The Origins Of American Felony Murder Rules, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
Contemporary commentators continue to instruct lawyers and law students that England bequeathed America a sweeping default principle of strict liability for all deaths caused in all felonies. This Article exposes the harsh "common law" felony murder rule as a myth. It retraces the origins of American felony murder rules to reveal their modern, American, and legislative sources, the rationality of their original scope, and the fairness of their original application. It demonstrates that the draconian doctrine of strict liability for all deaths resulting from all felonies was never enacted into English law or received into American law. This Article reviews …
Felony Murder And Mens Rea Default Rules: A Study In Statutory Interpretation, Guyora Binder
Felony Murder And Mens Rea Default Rules: A Study In Statutory Interpretation, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
The Model Penal Code's influential approach to culpability included default rules assigning a culpable mental state to every conduct, circumstance and result element of each offense. Such rules have been enacted in half of the American states. The Code's drafters also rejected what they understood to be the felony murder rule's imposition of "a form of strict liability for... homicide." Yet almost every state has retained some form of the felony murder rule and so repudiated the Model Penal Code's proposed reform. Because the Model Penal Code's disapproval of felony murder flows from its general disapproval of strict liability, the …