Unlike in the vast majority of fatal shootings by police officers, someone is going to prison for the 2015 death of 16-year-old A’Donte Washington in Alabama. It just isn’t the police officer who shot him.

Lakeith Smith was sentenced last week to 30 years for A’Donte’s murder, even though no one disputes it was an officer’s bullet that killed him. Smith is not even accused of having possessed a weapon. Under the state’s accomplice law, co-defendants can be guilty of murder if a death occurs when they are in the midst of committing a felony.

Smith was one of five teens who were allegedly committing a burglary when responding officers opened fire, killing A’Donte. Smith, now 18, was also sentenced to another 35 years for crimes related to the the burglary, for a total of 65 years.

“Because the sentences are consecutive, it will be a long time before he comes up for even the possibility for parole, at least 20 to 25 years,” prosecutor CJ Robinson said. “We are very pleased with this sentence.”

Smith was the only one of the four surviving co-defendants to decline a plea deal. Under the deal he was offered, Smith would have served only 25 years. The other defendants are awaiting sentencing.

According to juvenile justice reform advocates, youth defendants are often charged on accomplice statues. Situations like the one in Alabama, however, are rare.

“This is certainly an uncommon case,” said Jeree Thomas, the policy director of the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYG). “The defendant’s accomplice wasn’t even involved in the killing, it was a totally third-party, but they prosecuted him anyway.”

Marcy Mistreet, the CFYG chief executive, added: “It just speaks to the excessive power that prosecutors have in our system to even seek these kinds of charges.”

All but four states have some form of the law that Smith was charged under, which are usually referred to as felony-murder laws. At least a dozen, including Alabama, allow for individuals who commit a felony that ends in a death to be charged with murder even if the person killed is their own accomplice.

Advocates say that, generally speaking, felony-murder laws are necessary in the same way racketeering laws are. A group of people may have different roles in the commission of a crime, but they are criminally responsible in the end.

“If you have three people run into a bank and they have guns, and there’s a shooting, it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger,” said Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims rights advocacy group. “If you storm a bank with guns, you know it’s highly likely somebody is going to get killed and you’re still responsible for it.”

But even Scheidegger, who has been called the country’s “most outspoken advocate for capital punishment”, thinks the application was excessive in Smith’s case. In large part because Smith was effectively convicted of the murder of someone who – legally – was not murdered. A grand jury ruled A’Donte’s death a justifiable homicide after determining that the eldest of the group, then 19-year-old Jhavarske Jackson, fired at officers and that Washington was carrying a gun.

“You can’t be an accessory if there is no principal,” Scheidegger said.

Jennifer Holton, Smith’s lawyer, said in closing statements: “The law reads that you have to be a participant in the crime to be guilty. It is a tragedy that a young kid was killed. It will be an injustice if you hold Lakeith responsible.”

Jurors took less than 90 minutes to hand down a guilty verdict.