In 2001, Shawn Hatcher was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison for murder. Prosecutors used a Tennessee law to charge him with a crime he says his brother committed. He was 17 years old.
The concept of criminal responsibility for conduct of another isn’t particularly new or unheard of. It’s been a part of American common law – the sets of laws inherited from past judicial decisions – since at least the 19th century. And it’s been an official part of Tennessee’s state code for decades.
“[It was] a law which I wasn’t aware of at the time,” Hatcher said. “I was a child. I didn’t even have a GED, I hadn’t even graduated high school. So I was ignorant to that.”
Criminal justice reform groups are mobilizing to challenge the law, saying it unfairly affects minority groups and young people, such as Hatcher.
Theeda Murphy is the director of Abolition Works TN, a criminal justice reform group that has helped introduce legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly that would eliminate criminal responsibility provisions from state law.
“It has been used to draw in anybody who is even just tangentially related to the incident, or to the person who did it,” Murphy said. “It’s used to rope in a whole bunch of people that the prosecutors just feel should not be on the street so they can connect you to this person and what they did, even by sometimes very thin evidence.”
Prosecutors argue the law is helpful for securing convictions and keeping criminals behind bars. Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference Executive Director Stephen Crump spoke at a legislative panel reviewing the bill in March.
“If you go somewhere to rob somebody, and as a result of that, somebody gets murdered, you are guilty of murder,” Crump said before the panel. “You are attempting and assisting and helping that person commit the underlying crime, and if it results in someone’s death, you shouldn’t get a pass.”
The bill’s sponsors, state Sen. Raumesh Akbari and Rep. Jesse Chism, both Democrats of Shelby County, deferred the bill to next year to make time for summer study and discussion among lawmakers before bringing it to a full vote.
But the conversation surrounding criminal responsibility isn’t over. For some, it’s just getting started.
You can read the full article at WPLN.