This has been kicking around the interwebs for a few days. It concerns the fate of a 15 year old boy. While committing a burglary with his friend, both were shot, the friend fatally. The boy is now being charged with murdering his friend despite the fact that he wasn't armed, didn't fire the shot and certainly had no premeditated plot to see his friend die.
This is happening under Florida's felony murder doctrine: All deaths caused in the course of a felony are treated as murder, regardless of whether the deaths were accidental or not.
The main problem I have with this is that this sort of law does not deter criminal behavior. Beyond the fact that people permit crimes operating under the assumption that they will not be caught, I'd hazard that most non-violent crimes are committed with the assumption that nobody is going to die. As a result, this is the sort of law that simply doesn't enter into the equations being made by the potential criminal.
This seems so over broad. One could argue that if someone defrauds an old person that subsequently has a heart attack, that it was murder. That seems a bit silly.
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