Senator’s bill expands reach of felony murder law reform
Two years ago, a landmark criminal-justice law authored by a Bay Area state senator put strict limits on when a peripheral figure in a deadly crime could be charged with murder, freeing scores of people serving lengthy prison sentences for killings committed by someone else.
But subsequent state court rulings restricted eligibility for sentencing relief under the law to those convicted of murder. That left out people involved in the same kinds of circumstances but who chose to plead to lesser crimes like manslaughter to avoid a murder trial and the prospect of life imprisonment under the state’s now-diminished felony murder rule.
That all changes in January after Senate Bill 775, a follow-up bill by another Bay Area lawmaker, Peninsula-based State Sen. Josh Becker, was signed this week by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Now hundreds of people — perhaps as many as 2,000 — who were charged under the old felony murder standard and were not allowed to petition for re-sentencing under SB 1437 — the initial reform law authored by Berkeley-based State Sen. Nancy Skinner — can seek getting their convictions voided and, in many cases, release from prison.
“This bill is about people who did not have the intent to kill,” Becker said in an interview with this news organization. “It is the right and moral thing to do.”
Becker emphasized that his bill doesn’t create any new law, but “restores the intent” of SB 1437, which changed the state penal code section outlining the felony murder rule, a legal doctrine that made accomplices liable for murder when someone is killed during the commission of other felonies, such as robbery. Prosecutors previously only needed to prove participation in the underlying felony to secure a murder conviction, and are now required to prove someone had a direct role in the killing.
“The felony murder rule doesn’t make people safer and doesn’t have a deterrent factor,” he said. “All it does is lock people up for a long time.”
The California Public Defenders Association and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice were among the bill’s supporters and architects. Jennifer Redding, a Santa Clara County deputy public defender, said the courts’ interpretation of SB 1437 to this point created “an unintended strict application of the change in the law that resulted in the least-culpable people involved being left behind.”