In Colorado (and many other states), a person can be charged with murder if they are committing a certain felony and someone in their group commits murder in the process. If you go out, for instance, with a group of friends to rob a bank, and anyone of your friends kills someone at the bank, you could then be charged with murder and subject to life in prison without parole.

The statute that lays out the current rule is C.R.S. 18-3-102(1)(b) (current through 2019 legislative session). Senator Daniel Kagan (D, Colorado) has submitted a bill that would change the sentencing possibilities for this rule, essentially taking the crime from a class-one felony (potential penalty of life in prison without parole) to a class-two felony (with potential crime-of-violence sentencing). 

As with all major criminal justice issues, there are pros and cons to this rule from society’s perspective. Take, for example, a situation where a gang leader jumps and indoctrinates a vulnerable, 17-year-old kid who now becomes the youngest member of the gang. Now that leader demands that the 17-year-old carry a gun to a bank robbery and pull the trigger on anyone who stands in the gang’s way. If such a shooting actually occurs, who is society more worried about: the 17-year-old who pulled the trigger or the leader who manipulated the kid and demanded the shooting? Should the 17-year-old get charged with first-degree murder while the leader is only charged with the robbery?

Now let’s change the scenario up a bit: Let’s say that a group of criminals befriends a vulnerable, 17-year-old kid and invites him to “steal some money from a bank” with them. The kid goes along with this out of peer-pressure but has absolutely no idea that anyone in the group has a gun. Unfortunately, one of the group members does have a gun and kills someone in the process of the robbery. Should the 17-year-old, who just barely met this group, and who didn’t realize they had a gun, be held fully responsible for the other person’s shooting as though he had pulled the trigger? Hopefully, this is where the district attorney’s office would come into play and plead the case down. But what if the DA doesn’t believe the 17-year-old or the 17-year-old isn’t able to explain his position clearly?

What do you think about the bill? Should it pass or not?