Law Reviews — Racial Bias in Felony Murder and Accomplice Liability

A forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Denver Law Review dis­cuss­es two the­o­ries of homi­cide law, the felony mur­der rule and accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty, that cre­ate group lia­bil­i­ty for the actions of an indi­vid­ual. The arti­cle, writ­ten by Professors G. Ben Cohen (pic­tured), Justin D. Levinson, and Koichi Hioki states that ​“Research sug­gests that the admin­is­tra­tion of accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty [and] felony mur­der doc­trines dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact Black and minor­i­ty defen­dants,” caus­ing minor­i­ty defen­dants to be sen­tenced for first degree mur­ders they did not per­son­al­ly com­mit at greater rates than white defen­dants. The researchers’ expla­na­tion for this dis­par­i­ty is that ​“Americans auto­mat­i­cal­ly indi­vid­u­al­ize white men, yet auto­mat­i­cal­ly per­ceive Black and Latino men as group members.” 

According to the arti­cle, ​“Most mod­ern felony statutes pro­vide that a death that results from the com­mis­sion of a specif­i­cal­ly list­ed felony … con­sti­tutes first-degree mur­der for which the max­i­mum penal­ty is death or life impris­on­ment.” Accomplice lia­bil­i­ty ​“impute[s] respon­si­bil­i­ty to one per­son for the actions of anoth­er.” Between the two, if a group of defen­dants com­mits a felony and a per­son dies dur­ing its com­mis­sion, all mem­bers of the group could be charged with cap­i­tal mur­der in certain states.

The authors con­duct­ed a nation­al empir­i­cal study on a diverse sam­ple of Americans, iden­ti­fy­ing the way in which implic­it racial bias poten­tial­ly infil­trates the oper­a­tion of accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty and the felony mur­der rule. In addi­tion to iden­ti­fy­ing the racial dis­par­i­ties in con­clud­ing that a defen­dant act­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly, men­tioned above, the study found that: ​“mock jurors held Latino defen­dants more respon­si­ble for – and ascribed greater inten­tion­al­i­ty for – the same felony-mur­der style killing; and… mock jurors’ mem­o­ries of case facts actu­al­ly became sharp­ened when read­ing about Latino defen­dants, demon­strat­ing that aggres­sive stereo­types of cer­tain groups can pave the way for height­ened criminal responsibility.” 

The arti­cle con­cludes that ​“The risk that implic­it bias plays a role in charg­ing deci­sions and jury ver­dicts pro­vides suf­fi­cient con­cern to war­rant elim­i­na­tion of the doc­trine. … The risk that jurors assess­ing lia­bil­i­ty for these types of offens­es will assume group respon­si­bil­i­ty for the actions of Black and Latino defen­dants but ensure that white defen­dants are assessed cul­pa­bil­i­ty sole­ly for their own actions, war­rants lim­i­ta­tion of the use even in non- manda­to­ry life with­out parole sentences.”