One: 65 years, while long, is not "multiple life sentences." Two: The 65 years was shortly thereafter reduced to 55 years, though I am not finding any details on why. That 55 years was 30 for felony murder and 25 for burglary and theft (???), consecutively. Three: Body cam shows A'Donte Washington charging the officer with a drawn weapon, so this does not appear to be a case of abuse of force. Four: A later court changed those to run concurrently, making it an effective 30 years. In this hearing, the victim's own father made a statement that Smith did not deserve to be charged with his son's death. Five: This screenshot is dated less than a week after the original sentencing.

Other notes: There were five teens involved in this burglary, Smith was the only one who did not take a plea deal. The day before this burglary, Smith and others were involved in the murder of another man. The stolen car used in the burglary came from yet another murder. I have to think it was a difficult argument for the defense to make, that Smith "did not intend to hurt anyone." The prosecution surely had an easier time framing this in terms of "Smith was at least present when someone was murdered the day before [it may have been a short time, hours, since the earlier murder was "around midnight" and I don't see what time of day the later burglary occurred]. He had to know that continuing to commit crimes with the same group of people could end with death, and still pressed on."

Whatever your opinion about this situation, you will be better served by presenting it alongside a more complete and accurate respresentation of facts than this screenshot of a tweet contains.

This is probably "felony murder". The rule here is that if you are committing some kind of felony, and someone dies as a result, then you are guilty of murder for that person. This bypasses all of the usual intent filters between first degree murder, second degree murder, and manslaughter.

Classic example: you and a friend decide to hold up a bank. It goes sideways and a bank security guard shoots and kills your friend. You are guilty of murder because your friend died because you both decided to commit a felony.

Why the fuck are we going to have different courts for children if we're going to try 15 year olds as adults?

This is basic felony murder shit. Any attorney worth their salt should have been telling him to take the plea deal, because felony murder is a Big Fucking Deal. To be more exact, 46 of 50 states have some version of a felony murder statute, and in 24 of them--just under half--felony murder is a capital crime, and can potentially receive the death penalty.

A good attorney would be communicating this clearly to their client, and make sure that the client understood that going to trial would likely mean decades in prison, and possibly a death penalty; the odds of beating the charge, if you participated in the underlying crime, are very, very poor.

Here's the basic deal: when a deal occurs during the course of committing certain felonies, any major participant in the commission of that crime are guilty of causing that death. If you're the getaway driver in a bank robbery, and all of the robbers get killed by security guards, you get charged with murder for their deaths, even though it was legal for the security guards to use lethal force against them. Smith was one of the participants in the burglary, and it was during the commission of the burglary that Washington attacked a police officer and was killed. Because Smith was an active participant in that burglary, he's guilty of that death, even though Washington was justifiably killed by a cop.

And, BTW, this isn't bootlicking bullshit. It didn't need to be a cop that killed Washington for a felony murder charge to apply to Smith. If Washington had attacked the homeowner, and the homeowner had killled Washington, it would have been the same felony murder charge for Smith.

And yet none of Ashlii Babbit's co-conspirators were charged for her murder. Even the ones that brought a gun.

Context copypaste from tumblr:

[iguanodonwildman]:

“So I checked up on this case, and it turned out his sentence was reduced...

to 55 years

55 years for a unsuccessful burglary, theft, and the murder of a friend that was killed by police, when his only crime was breaking and entering when he was 15 years old.

This is the most up to date article I can find on it: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lakeith-smith-65-years-idUSKBN243246. “

Felony Murder is a bitch, just like whoever wrote that headline.

Yes, if a crime you are committing results in a police death of a person then you are liable

In the US at least, not Canada

Yes, you're reading it right: "whom was shot".

Whomsoever wrote that should be shot.