by Bob Walsh
Most states, including the formerly great state of California, have a felony murder rule of some sort on the books. Essentially it means that if you participate in the commission of a felony from which death is a reasonably foreseeable occurrence, and a death does in fact occur, you can be prosecuted for murder even though you did not personally murder anybody.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that a man doing 19 to life for a 1996 conviction may present a case asserting that the CA statute is unconstitutionally vague.
The case under consideration is one on which the wrong person was shot and killed. The bad guy, Shedrick Henry, was attempting to kill a man in the hallway of an apartment building in Berkeley. He hit an innocent bystander by accident. The issue is whether or not the term "inherently dangerous" is so imprecise as to be unconstitutionally vague.
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