CRIMINAL JUSTICE MANAGEMENT - Term Paper Example

Yet, if, in the process of preparing to commit a crime, another crime is executed out by any of the conspirators, the remaining conspirators would be deemed as culpable of the felony as much as the actual perpetrator. The US’s Supreme Court decisions in the cases of Enmund v. Florida (1982) and Tison v. Arizona (1987) are basically seeking to separate innocent accomplices from guilty ones during prosecution and sentencing. In the former case, the Court limited the putting of accomplices in murder cases to death to when the individual in question does not kill, try to kill, or predict that a killing would happen or lethal force would be used.

But in Tison v. Arizona (1987), the Court widened the scope of executing murder accomplices, perhaps because most of them are major participants in the crime. In light of these bodies of law, murder accomplices should be executed because they are oftentimes guilty of aiding and or abetting the crime by their actions or omissions (Fears 1). In this case, with the armed Reneau setting out the commit the robbery, Wood cannot claim that he did not foresee the use of lethal force and or murder in the convenient store; therefore, he should be put to death.

Criminal culpability and sentencing requires the meeting of actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind) conditions in the successful trial of a suspect. In light of these doctrines, an accomplice in a felony murder may be less guilty than the actual murderer by virtue of the lack of mens rea. This implies that an accomplice may be actively involved in a crime (by act) and not by mind. As such, subjecting such an accomplice to death sentence would be tantamount to miscarriage of justice (Crump 1156).

According to Garberg and Libkuman (554), except for cases in which the principal criminal was not actually the principal, in the