Felony murder charge in botched robbery
18-year-old allegedly started gunfight that ended in fellow suspect being shot to death
After midnight on July 9, teens Tyrik Turner and Kyron Hagan hatched a plot to try to steal Carlos Jimenez’s truck in the Cypress Station area, officials say.
The two armed men approached Jimenez when he arrived at his Trevor Way home and demanded the keys to his truck, Jimenez later told Harris County Sheriff ’s deputies.
When Jimenez refused, Turner allegedly shot him in the lower hip. Jimenez, 30, took out his own handgun and returned fire in defense, exchanging gunfire “with both suspects,” according to the account from the sheriff ’s office.
One of the shots Jimenez fired struck Hagan in the neck, ultimately killing him.
Now Turner, whose shot allegedly began the gunfight but did not hit Hagan, is facing a felony murder charge in the death of his alleged co-conspirator.
In court documents, prosecutors argue the robbery and Turner’s gunshot led to Hagan’s death. A Harris County grand jury indicted Turner, 18, on a felony murder charge, along with aggravated robbery, on Oct. 27, according to court documents.
The Harris County District Attorney’s office declined to comment. Turner’s defense attorney, Steven Greenlee, did not respond to a request for comment.
The felony murder charge is used in cases where someone is killed in the course of another felony, like a robbery, even if the death is unintentional. Prosecutors can aim to hold that person responsible for the initial crime’s consequences.
State law says someone commits felony murder if “he commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.” “It basically gives prosecutors the discretion to charge someone with murder, even if they did not have the intent to kill, which is the primary consideration generally speaking in determining what level of punishment someone should deserve,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. “It’s been much criticized.”
It is somewhat similar to the “law of parties,” which holds accomplices responsible if someone else involved in the crime commits a murder. Except in this case, the person who died was Turner’s alleged accomplice, not the vic
tim.
That application — to another accomplice — is less common, according to Thompson.
“It’s an extension that some jurisdictions have not allowed,” Thompson said. “The idea is that, (some) courts have said it takes it too far. It’s one thing if you kill an innocent person, but the idea that it could trigger liability for one of the coconspirators” is a further stretch.
The highest courts in Michigan and Massachusetts have prohibited the felony murder legal doctrine altogether. Other states — like Hawaii, Kentucky and Ohio — have forbidden it by enacting legislation. The practice is also banned in countries like Canada, India and England, where the doctrine first originated in common law.
Still, most jurisdictions in the United States use some form of the doctrine, according to the The Marshall Project.
Harris County prosecutors used the same charge in August against Gerald Goines, the Houston police officer at the center of a botched raid that left two people dead. In that case, Goines was charged because the deaths occurred during the felony of tampering with a government record — a no-knock warrant.
The law also has been used in Texas to charge repeat DWI offenders with murder.
Elsewhere, it has been used in more eye-popping cases. Ryan Holle was convicted of murder in Florida for lending his car to a friend, who then drove to another house and killed the homeowner’s 18-yearold daughter.
And in Kansas, a man who helped organize a drug deal was charged with murder when the buyer, who turned out to be a gang member, shot and killed the dealer. A jury later acquitted the man.
Turner’s case is due back in Harris County District Court next month.