Wow. So you guys are lifers. Lifers. This is me just a few months ago in San Quentin State Prison, in California. I spent the last 16 years of my life in prison serving time for murder. That’s right — murder. But the thing is — I didn’t kill anyone. And don’t just take my word for it. The judge, the prosecutor and the jury in my case all agreed that I hadn’t killed anyone, but they still sentenced me as the actual killer and put me in prison with 25 years to life. All right. I want to tell you about something called the felony murder rule. It’s a glitch in our criminal justice system, a glitch we only have in the United States. And it basically says this. Felony murder rule. Any death which occurs during the commission of a felony is first-degree murder, and all participants in that felony can be charged with and found guilty of murder. Translation: If you commit a felony, and while that felony is happening, someone gets killed, you can be found guilty of murder whether or not you killed anyone. Here’s an example. Let’s say you let your friend borrow your car. You know he’s going to use it to commit a robbery. But then he ends up killing someone. The felony murder rule says that you’re equally guilty of the murder as your friend. This actually happened to a guy named Ryan Holle. Instead of going to prison for an attempted robbery, he’s serving life without the possibility of parole. Or what about this? You and your friend decide to commit a robbery. As you’re running away, your friend is shot dead by the police. The felony murder rule says that you are going to prison for his murder even though it was the cops who killed him. You guessed it. There’s a kid named Tevin Lewis serving 52 years to life for this exact situation. Or it could be a robbery, a snatch and grab where your accomplice unexpectedly pulls out a knife and kills someone. That’s what happened to me. We agreed that no weapons were to be used, but the guy I was with brought a knife. The jury found me guilty of an intent to commit a robbery, but the felony murder rule said I should be sentenced for first-degree murder. And that’s what I got — 25 years to life. I was 18. Maybe you’re thinking I deserved to go to prison, and I agree with you. I committed a robbery, and I should be held responsible. But one of the basic principles of a fair legal system is that people should only be held responsible for the crimes that they committed, not for crimes committed by someone else. The felony murder rule dates way back to England in the 1700s, but they repealed it in 1957. In fact, every other country that had a version of the felony murder rule has ditched it except one. Now, the felony murder rule does have its supporters. If you set out to commit a crime, you should expect that someone’s going to get hurt. But how can you expect an accidental death or know that someone is going to suddenly pull out a weapon. The felony murder rule deters people from being involved in violent crime. That might work if people knew the rule even existed. The first time I heard about it was when I was first charged. Well, someone should be held responsible when a person is killed. Yes, someone should be held responsible, but it should be the person who actually did it. So how many people are incarcerated for murders everyone agrees they didn’t commit? The truth is we don’t even know. Nobody is keeping track of this, not even the courts. The closest we have is a guess from a study of crime data. It said that one in five people for murder convictions are there for felony murder. If that’s true — and again, we’re not for sure — but if that’s true, that’s 36,000 people in prison right now serving time for murders they should never have been charged with. Various of our states, including California, have not appropriately defined our murder statute so that it can fit the crime that is committed. And now the good news — during my own incarceration, I campaigned to get the felony murder rule amended in the state of California. So it took three years, but last August, Senate Bill 1437 was passed saying that people who are serving time for felony murder but who never had any intent to kill are eligible to have their life sentences overturned. In January, 2019, my sentence was reduced to three years, and I had already served 16 years. So I was released. California is only the seventh state in the country to amend the felony murder rule. If you live in any one of these states, there are definitely people in prison near you serving life sentences for murders that everyone agrees they didn’t commit. As if America’s mass incarceration crisis isn’t bad enough already. It’s crazy being back here, but I want to help those people who are still behind these walls who are still serving those long sentences. State governors and legislators need to take the lead and make a push to amend the felony murder rule in every state so other people like me don’t lose decades of their lives serving time for crimes that they didn’t commit. [MUSIC PLAYING]