New York man gets 30 years in prison after cops shoot each other in a 'friendly fire' incident.
Recall DA Miranda Katz.
At what point do we stop pretending Americans have due process or fair treatment under the law in this freest of the free countries?
2018-year-old Jagger Freeman served as a look-out for another man who robbed a T-Mobil store in 2019. The man had a fake gun. When police arrived, he allegedly pointed the fake gun at them (or … did he? People don’t tend to commit suicide by cop to get out of a Class-C felony, which carries 3 years in prison). Anyway, the police responded by spraying so many bullets in the store, they hit one officer in the leg and one in the chest. Detective Brian Simonsen died in the hospital.
Freeman was offered a plea deal: 10 years behind bars. But he chose to go to trial, possibly because it’s insane to give up a decade of your life — he has a 7 year old daughter — for not killing someone or even being in the same room when they were killed. Instead, he went to trial.
Under New York’s felony murder statute, any participant in a violent felony is on the hook for any resulting deaths. But that’s commonly applied when the assailant shoots and kills during the robbery, not cops just spraying bullets everywhere. Freeman was sentenced 30 years to life.
“The primary justification offered for the contemporary felony-murder rule is deterrence,” writes Iowa College of Law professor James Tomkovics. Great. Next time someone considers being a lookout during a robbery, they’ll weigh the possibility that the guy committing the robbery would wave his fake gun at police who would then shoot each other, and get deterred.
At his sentencing, the judge berated Freeman for exercising his right to trial. “You demanded your trial, and you got your trial,” he said. “[The jury] determined that you are far from being a mere lookout.” Looks like the case will have a deterrent effect—to deter people from going before a jury of their peers.
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