Last January, Illinois legislators changed the state s felony murder statute as part of the landmark criminal justice reform bill known as the SAFE-T Act. But it didn t apply the reform retroactively.
The felony murder rule allows prosecutors to bring murder charges against anyone who participates in committing certain felonies if a death happens during the crime. The doctrine applies even if
SB 1018: Connecticut’s effort to increase prosecutorial accountability and why it will not work
Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division, CT OPM
Prosecutors hold people’s lives in their hands. Their decisions shape not only the futures of defendants, prisoners, and formerly incarcerated people, but also the overall extent of mass incarceration. Currently, the United States is the international leader for incarceration with almost 2.3 million people behind bars. Connecticut’s incarceration rates are no exception: before the COVID19 pandemic, about 60,000 Connecticut residents were locked up, under probation, or on parole. Roughly 16,000 of those people were incarcerated.
But the solution to mass incarceration is not simple; structural barriers exist which prevent the current legal procedures from holding prosecutors accountable. Connecticut’s Senate Bill 1018 is intended to address prosecutorial power and break down barriers to ending mass incarceration but does it?