Posted on 04/14/2014 12:19:11 AM PDT by PaulCruz2016
Several years ago I read a piece in The New York Times by Adam Liptak about Ryan Holle. Ryan, who had no prior record, is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in Florida. He was convicted of pre-meditated murder, even though no one, including the prosecutor, disputes that Ryan was asleep in his bed at home at the time of the crime. This could only happen in America, because we are the only country that retains the Felony Murder Rule. What the Felony Murder Rule essentially says is if anyone has anything to do with a felony in which a murder takes place, such as a robbery, that person is as guilty as the person who has committed the murder. Every other country including England, India and Canada has gotten rid of it because of its unintended consequences. In America, Michigan, Kentucky and Hawaii no longer have the law. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled, when they discarded the Felony Murder Rule, that a person should be held responsible for his own actions not the actions of others.
Exactly what did Ryan Holle do? At a party in his apartment over ten years ago, he lent his car to his roommate and went to sleep. He had lent his car to his roommate many times before with no negative consequences. This time the roommate and others went to a house where they knew a woman was selling marijuana from a safe. They planned to get the marijuana, but in the course of their break-in a teenage girl was killed. Those at the scene all received appropriately harsh sentences, but so did Ryan Holle. I got involved with the case shortly after I read Adam Liptak’s piece. I have been advocating on behalf of clemency for Ryan, who was first offered a plea deal of ten years but chose to go to trial. I’m sure it was difficult for a young man, who had never been arrested, and who believed he had done nothing to accept that he should go to prison for ten years, so he went to trial, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He is now in his eleventh year of incarceration. Again, this is a young man who was home asleep in bed at the time of the crime. I personally know of no other felony murder conviction where the person was not even present, and the pre-meditated part of the conviction suggests that Ryan knew his car was going to be used in the course of a murder, which to me, isn’t credible. To the best of my knowledge, in the entire history of the criminal justice system in America, no one has ever been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for loaning a car and going to sleep.
A few years ago I was on a television show with the father of the girl who was murdered in the robbery attempt. The father felt that it was entirely justified that Ryan Holle spend his life in prison. At the time, I couldn’t bring myself to say what I was feeling. I felt the father and mother were a lot more responsible for their daughter’s death than Ryan Holle. The mother did actually serve three years in prison for selling drugs, but both parents in no way should have been involved in selling drugs from their house. It would only be a question of time before the wrong person knocked on the door. In my judgment, parents who would do that with two teenage daughters at home have a lot more responsibility for this tragedy than Ryan Holle.
Ryan writes me from prison telling me that when he gets out, he plans to speak out against the Felony Murder Rule. Unless people of good will and common sense publicize his case, Ryan Holle will die in prison.
Hey Ryan can we borrow your car for a home invasion?
Sure go right ahead.
Sounds like we’re getting to the rut of this issue. A good lesson for EVERYONE, don’t drop your guard for heart-wrenching stories - make them PROVE IT. The libs know that, which is why they attack every “I lost my health insurance” case.
Do not let those people CONTROL your thoughts - fight back, be suspicious. If a jury put this guy away, trust the jury first - not a left-wing reporter - always.
You can see the bias of the author in this statement. The girl didn't happen to get hit by a falling meteorite. She was killed by the perpetrators. They obviously had some sort of killing devices with them, and intended to use them, if necessary. Holle knew, or should have known, this could happen. There is another side to this story that isn't being told.
This says a lot about operation Fast and Furious. Holder, the Mahdi, and their accomplices damn well knew the weapons that were to be walked would be walked straight to the drug cartels where those weapons would e used for murder and mayhem. There’s a big difference between loaning somebody a car to go on a date and loaning him the same car to commit a felony, just as there’s a huge difference between loaning a gun for hunting or target shooting and loaning one for a felony. In the one case the lender’s probably doing something legal; in the other it’s a felony because of the lender’s guilty knowledge. The guilty knowledge of the Mahdi, Holder, and their accomplices makes them as guilty of the murders perpetrated with the F&F weapons as if they had personally pulled the triggers.
"Ryan writes me from prison telling me that when he gets out, he plans to speak out against the Felony Murder Rule"
I imagine he would. And , for your enlightenment, it is a law, not a rule. There is a difference.
"Ryan Holle will die in prison."
We can hope.
I very much agree that the driver of a getaway car is just as guilty as the bank robbers, assuming he was knowingly and willingly there at the crime scene.
(It’s not all that uncommon for criminals to conscript an acquaintance or even a random person to be the driver and use his/her vehicle in the crime.)
This case is quite insane, from what the car owner supposedly had been told. From what I’ve read, he wasn’t in on the planning and certainly wasn’t there for the execution of the crime.
This would be akin to holding a landlord responsible for the crimes of his tenants. Crimes the landlord knew nothing about. Even if someone alleged that something was going on at one of his properties the landlord still should not automatically be at fault. That would be ridiculous, just like this case of the sleeping (drunk) car owner.
While I agree that it is an unjust law, and needs to be repealed, I’d need to know more than one side of this story. However, I do agree that for these parents to be “selling” from their own house, they bear as much guilt for the death of their daughter as the one who pulled the trigger. This was illegal activity. PERIOD!
Yea, he definitely should have taken the 10 given those details.
Personally I think the judiciary should have some leeway in giving people, particularly young ones with clean or minor records going into something like this, some type of penal battalion type sentence with rigid discipline and physical service as an alternative to a life ending sentences.
If you’re going to give an 18 year old a life sentence without parole all that tells me is that society is just to candy assed to kill them. Hell, it would be a mercy to the perp, and it eliminates the whole expense/incarceration structure for people who essentially have nothing to lose from that point forward with respect to escape or jailhouse mayhem.
I sat on a Jury for 2 defendants for 5 counts of attempted murder with great bodily injury and gang, handgun and street terrorism enhancements. The verdict was split between the 2, with one being convicted (and getting all 3 strikes in that one trial) and sentenced to minimum 25 to life and the other guy walking. It’s long in the details, but the convicted guy had a clean record and had ended up being leaned on to commit the situation by an older brother in prison. While the crime was pretty horrendous, if ever there was an opportunity to reform someone though a 10 or so year grueling service deal the kid would have been an ideal candidate.
With respect to the other defendant, I mentioned to the defense guy while he was chatting with the prosecutor after the fact that the Lord had seen fit to give him a stupefying second chance, and he aught to counsel him to move off to the middle of nowhere and start from scratch.
It sounds like a weirdness that tests the sanity of the rule. It looks suspicious, but maybe it doesn’t even rise to the level of the proof of a crime. With the privileges of juries come their downfalls too. Maybe a pardon can eventually be had.
Lefties often want to see people in jail, it’s just different people.
This is civil liability.
What if he loaned him his tennis shoes to walk down to the drug house?
No it was to STEAL pot.
The drugs are irrelevant. Substitute anything else and the story plays out the same way.
These guys were going to do a home invasion robbery and, not surprising, someone got killed.
Did he know before he lent them the car or not is the point.
Ok. Thanks. I never thought about that. There is a difference. Again, thank you for pointing that out to me.
And was there more of this that went down? He claimed he thought it was a joke,which might be credible if that was the first time these pals had gone on a mission of this kind. But they might as well have just kept mum about the planned robbery/burglary and asked to borrow it to “see a girlfriend.” And yet on the third hand anyhow, who squealed about telling him... was this folks who were hoping to get a more lenient sentence? It’s hard to make rose perfume out of fermented skunk droppings.
Removing legal bans on pot might not do anything at all about people who want to steal it.
ANYTHING “The Nation” is against, I have to do serious thinking before I decide I agree with them. They’re just that far out on the communist edge of the envelope.
I doubt it will. People steal all kinds of things that they could buy at any supermarket.
“Did he know before he lent them the car or not is the point.”
I get the ‘law’, stupid as it may be.
I love people on here who can’t see the myriad circumstances under which they could find themselves in similar straits.
“can i borrow your pen?”
stab someone in the head and hand it back to you mr guilty.
How about you lend a family member 20 bucks who turns around and solicits a child prostitute? Guess what you little enabler you. Guilty.
we can go on and on but i’m quite certain that anyone who can say its not the point whether he knew or not will never admit to being wrong.
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