Waiting for Tennessee to Reform Its Felony Murder Rule

    The trajectory of most proposed changes to Tennessee’s criminal-legal system is for all of us to stay in prison as long as possible. The state legislature reconvened for the new session on January 14, and for the next three months will consider legislation proposing more pre-trial incarceration, less “good time” and so forth. But I’m hopeful that among those proposals will be one that didn’t make it out of committee in 2024, which would reform the state’s felony murder rule. 

    Senate Bill 2725/House Bill 2785 has not yet reappeared on the docket this session, but there’s still a good chance that it will. In 2024 the legislation didn’t necessarily fail due to lack of bipartisan support, but more due to being a low priority during an election year. Whether our GOP supermajority would allow it to actually become law is another matter.

    “Under present law, one meaning of murder is a killing of another committed in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any first degree murder, arson, robbery, burglary, theft, kidnapping, aggravated abuse of an elderly or vulnerable adult, aggravated neglect of an elderly or vulnerable adult, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect or aircraft piracy,” the legislation states. “This bill removes this provision.”

    Felony murder laws allow people to be convicted of murder even though they didn’t kill anyone. As long as they were involved in a felony, during the course of which someone died, they can be found guilty of murder and spend the rest of their life in prison.

    For example, say two people carry out a burglary together. No one intends for anyone to die, but things go awry and a bystander is fatally shot. Both defendants are charged with felony murder, even though only one person pulled the trigger. This can happen even if they were unarmed, and it was a police officer who shot the person by accident.

    Before you learn how the system really works, you assume that maintaining your innocence would get you home sooner.

    “Everyone in my neighborhood was in a gang,” Terrance Heard told Filter. Heard, like myself, is currently incarcerated at South Central Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison privately operated by CoreCivic. 

    Heard didn’t have stable housing for most of his teenage years, and in his 20s gang affiliation felt to him like community. He was one of more than a dozen people indicted for a high-profile killing that he himself wasn’t directly responsible for.

    He was offered a plea deal, and turned it down. “I struggled with the thought of taking responsibility for a murder I did not commit,” he told Filter.

    That was 26 years ago. The plea was for 15 years.

    Before decades of incarceration show you how the system really works, it makes sense to think that refusing the plea and maintaining your innocence is the choice that would get you home sooner. If you’re being charged with murder and it’s clear that you weren’t the one who did it, why would you plead guilty? But under felony murder rules, the harshest punishments are often reserved for those with the least involvement in someone’s death.

    Adams will be eligible for release after 51 years. his codefendants took plea deals for about half that time.

    Jonathan Adams is also incarcerated for a murder he did not commit. He and two other people were indicted for the same shooting death in 2007. Adams didn’t pull the trigger. He was the only one of the three to plead not guilty.

    “I was never offered a plea deal,” he told Filter. “And I never killed anyone … God knows I did not kill anyone.”

    He was sentenced to life in prison for felony murder, plus 20 years for the underlying felony of robbery. Like everyone convicted of murder in Tennessee and sentenced to life with parole, he’ll have to serve 51 years before he’s actually eligible for parole. After his trial, the other two codefendants each took plea deals for about half that time.

    The United States is the only common-law country to still embrace felony murder. Many states have overturned or reformed their own felony murder laws, and in some cases have made the changes retroactive. This legislative session could be the one that allows Heard, Adams and so many others to apply for resentencing.

    Adams has completed every rehabilitation program that he’s been advised to take, and currently works as a graphic designer at South Central’s printing press. Heard is a minister at South Central’s largest church service, and many people here including myself have come to view him as the moral compass to which we look for direction. But barring a rare commutation from the governor, unless the law is changed both these men will die in prison as punishment for murders they did not commit; if they had, the state may well have let them go home by now.

     


     

    Image (cropped) via Federal Bureau of Investigation

    • Tony has served almost three decades of a life with parole sentence in Tennessee. Before prison he lived as a closeted gay man; his Southern Baptist parents and an older brother have since died. While incarcerated he has worked as a tutor, clerk and newspaper editor. He’s also begun book clubs and writing workshops, and prisoner-led elder care programs. He writes about captivity in the hope of contributing to the prison reform movement. You can reach him by USPS.

      Tony Vick #276187
      South Central Correctional Facility
      PO Box 279
      Clifton, TN 38425-0279

    • Show Comments

    You May Also Like