Felony Murder and the Law of Parties

I don't really have any time to write about this, so I recommend you check out Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, who writes about the injustice of the peculiar law that put a young Florida man in jail for life for loaning his car to someone, the same law that almost got Texan Kenneth Foster killed earlier this year. The problem is not that these men might be innocent of any wrong-doing, but rather that their punishment far exceeds their culpability for the crimes that were committed by their associates. It is a basic tenet of justice that punishment is proportionate to the crime, and this law invites wildly disproportionate results.