Elastic sentencing guidelines in felony murder
Here’s a Minneapolis case originating in the post-Floyd riots of 2020:
Lee came up to the Twin Cities from Rochester to get in on the action on May 28. Lee was part of a small group that broke into the Max It Pawn Shop on East Lake Street in Minneapolis, home to many minority-owned businesses. The pawn shop was looted. Lee poured out a can of gasoline and ignited a fire that consumed the shop.
Videos captured the action. Lee was proud of it. Filmed outside the shop as it burned, Lee commented: “Fuck this place. We’re gonna burn this bitch down.”
Bystanders knew someone had been caught in the fire. Two months later the authorities found Oscar Lee Stewart, Jr. in the charred remains of the pawn shop…
Lee thereafter pleaded guilty to the arson charge. He committed felony murder in the process of the arson. Federal sentencing guidelines strongly suggested that a sentence of 20 years was appropriate, but the prosecutor argued for 12…
…[T]he prosecutor’s rationale for leniency is, shall we say, troubling:
“The Guidelines state that departure below this range is not ordinarily appropriate. However this is an extraordinary case. The United States therefore seeks a downward variance, and a sentence of 144 months.
“Mr. Lee’s motive for setting the fire is a foremost issue. Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he “could have demonstrated in a different way,” but that he was “caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police.”
Lee’s sentence was ten years. Note that it was the prosecution from the DOJ asking for leniency.
Compare that to the sentence given to William “Roddie” Bryan for felony murder in the Arbery case, which was life imprisonment. Bryan was a participant in the chasing of Arbery but not in his actual shooting, but since Bryan was found guilty of false imprisonment for the chasing, that constituted the felony which set the stage for a felony murder conviction despite the fact that Bryan’s participation appears to have amounted to chasing (his claim is that their motive was the citizen’s arrest) and videoing with his cellphone.
I’ve explained in several posts that the crime of felony murder has always troubled me, because it can so easily be applied to someone who is not really guilty of murder, and the penalties can be extremely harsh. In the case of Lee, I don’t think he is guilty of murder, but arson of a building is a crime that is so reckless that the perpetrator should assume that someone might be killed. Bryan’s chasing of Arbery in his vehicle in order to make a citizen’s arrest (I don’t think even the prosecution claimed their motive was to murder Arbery) doesn’t seem to be of that same inherent dangerousness. The disparity between the extreme severity of Bryan’s sentence and that of Lee seems especially egregious, given those facts.
“The law don’t fit? You must convict!”
It’s sad to know that the race of the person who is charged with felony murder is the determining factor. It used to be that black people charged with crimes were found guilty and punished harshly out of proportion to their culpability, or even if they were clearly innocent. That was wrong. What’s going on now is also wrong.
Here’s your problem: judges are sh!ts.
“caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police.”
Two things in this statement catch my eye:
First is that he was “caught up in the fury of the mob” – that is something that is NOT an excuse. Apparently he never had a mother or father say to him “I don’t care that others were doing it. If they all jumped off a bridge would you jump too?”
Second is that “watching his peers suffer at the hands of the police” – well, I won’t argue there. His peers are the criminals that tangled with police and lost. So, this is an honest statement to refer to those hoods as his peers. It wasn’t meant it that way; but, it is the truth.
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the victim.”
“Two months later the authorities found Oscar Lee Stewart, Jr. in the charred remains of the pawn shop…”
Those who grieve for Oscar Lee Stewart, Jr. are also arsonist Montez Terriel Lee, Jr.’s victims as well.
The charge of felony murder with a conviction of life imprisonment for William “Roddie” Bryan is not just inappropriate, not just unjust but unconstitutional, as it is clearly cruel and unusual punishment.
I may have already posted this link here in a NewNeo thread, but I screen-captured the original (13 mins 15 secs) body-cam and dash-cam encounter some months earlier between the “felony-murdered” Arbery and the Glynn County (GA) police. Arbery was bizarrely dressed, his vehicle registration and/or his drivers license were suspended/expired, and the cops were astonishingly polite and conciliatory until one felt threatened enough by Arbery’s in-his-face combativeness that he took out his taser and made Arbery kneel for few minutes until he calmed down, when the cop re-holstered the taser. In the end, because of the vehicle documents being defunct, Arbery had to leave his car and walk out of there. The cops’ treatment of this clearly dangerous and crazed character was impeccable from beginning to end.
https://vimeo.com/647957977
There is a strange myth spreading through the land. The myth that racism is present in the heart of every white person. It flies in face of MLK’s “I have dream” speech. His ideal was that every person, regardless of ethnicity, color, sex, or religion, would be judged equally – by the content of their character. The myth stands this ideal on its head. The myth calls for revenge. And it’s now being meted out in our courts of law. The deplorables don’t believe it. It’s only accepted and promulgated by the elites. Bad times, folks. Bad times.
J.J.,
I continue to contend that our best chance at a way out of this is for “blacks*” to stand up and make vocal statements against this nonsense. And, most importantly, to call out racism in their own community. It is rampant among them, much moreso than with “whites” (and the same is true with Asians).
*I put blacks and whites in quotes because I feel the terms are nonsensical. We’ve reverted to the “one drop” era of Reconstruction.
Rufus, as you know, “to stand up and make vocal statements against this nonsense ” is part of exhibiting the character that MLK urged all of us to pursue (aspire to?).
I suppose it may take even more character for blacks to go against the racialist industry than Asians or whites. But successful blacks who became successful by following the “success sequence” [from George Will and/or others?] can be the strongest voices against the charge of “acting white”. Glenn Loury and John McWhorter are already doing their part, as we have seen in earlier Neo posts.