Illinois' SAFE-T Act change in the 'felony murder rule' left people behind in Chicago shooting charges while some say it provides cover for police.
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"The felony murder rule has a lot of mischief attached to it," Drizin said."It imposes punishments that do not fit the crime for a lot of accomplices." The SAFE-T Act also did not apply the felony murder reform retroactively. At least dozens of people are serving time in Illinois prisons on murder charges that likely wouldn't have been filed if the crime happened today, according to an Injustice Watch analysis.
If the felony murder reform had been made retroactive, many of the people charged for murders committed by third parties might have been given a chance at resentencing. James Garbarino, a psychology professor at Loyola University of Chicago who studies child development and youth violence, said people age 25 and younger are particularly vulnerable to laws such as felony murder that punish people for being accomplices to crimes that play out in violent ways that they may not have foreseen.
It's unclear what percentage of the women in our data are survivors of domestic violence or how many were coerced by an abuser into committing the underlying crime. But a 2019 study by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority found that practically all the women in Illinois prisons had experienced domestic violence or abuse. In Illinois, compulsion and coercion are not legal defenses for first-degree murder, Mansfield said.
Court records show that Ray was sentenced to 42 years in prison for the 2006 armed robbery and murder of the assistant manager of a restaurant that she used to work at. Ray said at trial that she only drove her co-defendants to the crime scene, and that, while they didn't force her to drive them, she didn't know that they had planned to rob and kill the assistant manager, who had fired her earlier that day, according to court records.
Last year, California state lawmakers expanded the reform's reach to people who were charged with felony murder but pleaded guilty to lesser crimes, such as manslaughter. In 2019, Illinois State Rep. Justin Slaughter introduced a bill that would have gone almost as far as California's bill. The bill proposed applying felony murder only to people who commited a felony with another person and"knew that the other participant would engage in conduct that would result in death or great bodily harm."
John Rekowski, the former chief public defender in Madison County, Illinois, who helped push for the SAFE-T Act in the legislature, said supporters of the bill were aware that they had to make concessions so opponents of the bill would not have ammunition to stop it.Peters said there are no current plans to make the felony murder changes retroactive or to broaden the reform to include more people.
Louis was charged with armed robbery and his friend's murder under the felony murder rule and sentenced to 32 years in prison.
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