Felony Murder rule stands, but where is our anti-lynching law?
Its reach is so far that a boy who was home asleep in his bed at the time of the crime is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in Florida, because he lent his car to his roommate who, with others, committed a robbery and a murder. We are the only so-called civilized country in the world that has this law. In 1990 the Canadian Supreme Court did away with the felony murder rule for accomplices, saying it violated “The principal that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.” A professor of law at Yale said “The view in Europe is we hold people responsible for their own acts and not the acts of others.” I shouldn’t be surprised that we have the Felony Murder Rule, because to this day our Congress has been unable to pass anti-lynching legislation. Southern opponents of the Federal anti-lynching law argued that the states could apprehend, prosecute and punish those involved in lynchings. This argument fell apart when 28 self-confessed lyncher
