Steven Michael Woods, Jr. (April 17, 1980 - September 13, 2011)[1] was an American who was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas.[2] Woods was sentenced to the death penalty after a jury convicted him of the capital murders of drug dealer Ronald Whitehead, 21, and Bethena Brosz, 19, on May 2, 2001 in The Colony, Texas.[3]

Woods' co-defendant, Marcus Rhodes, pled guilty to shooting both victims to death with a firearm in the same criminal transaction and received a life sentence.

Felony murder conviction results in death sentence.
Actual murderer just gets life.

This was in 2011.

We're a sophisticated civilization! Wheee!!!

Conviction and execution of Steven Michael Woods, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contemporary commentators continue to instruct lawyers and law students that England bequeathed America a sweeping default principle of strict liability for all deaths caused in all felonies. This Article exposes the harsh "common law" felony murder rule as a myth. It retraces the origins of American felony murder rules to reveal their modern, American, and legislative sources, the rationality of their original scope, and the fairness of their original application. It demonstrates that the draconian doctrine of strict liability for all deaths resulting from all felonies was never enacted into English law or received into American law.

A lot of deeply unjust aspects of our system are the product of undue and historically inaccurate deference to supposed ancient principles which authoritarians claim they cannot now overturn, you know, due to their ancientness. Many of these ancient principles are not nearly as ancient as their defenders claim. For example, the Supreme Court rests our "anything goes" border search doctrine on ancient principles whose history is thinly documented and which several observers have questioned.

This article makes it very clear that nothing about the history of felony murder justifies charging someone with that crime because they got in a car accident in conjunction with a felony.

In historical felony murder cases in America:

There are no cases of a victim voluntarily contributing to his or her own death. There are no suicides, no voluntary drug overdoses, no overzealous police officers plunging off roofs or into icy rivers or in front of carriages while pursuing felons. There are no cases of victims having heart attacks out of mere fright (although there is one case in which a victim died while struggling with an assailant). There are no cases of victims getting the wrong medicine or contracting diseases at hospitals, or getting killed accidentally in traffic (unless you consider a planned train wreck accidental). Perhaps most importantly, there are no cases of feloniously shooting at livestock or game and unforeseeably hitting a man. So the proposal in the English treatises to predicate murder liability on accidental death in stealing poultry was never put into practice in England or America.

In reviewing nineteenth-century American felony murder convictions, we come across no freak accidents of any kind.

The Origins of American Felony Murder Rules by Guyora Binder :: SSRN

I think the Zimmerman/Martin case has been over sensationalized by the news media. I was originally concerned that it was an example of an overzealous act that wasn't being prosecuted properly because police identified with the shooter as a security person. That might yet be the case, but its no longer my primary concern. My feelings have shifted as I've seen irresponsible reporting and large numbers of people rushing to judgement without support of evidence. As time goes on, the set of problems related to that incident continues to multiply. Beyond whether or not Zimmerman is guilty, did the police properly investigate it or not? Were the charges of second degree murder appropriate or not? If they were, then why didn't this happen immediately and what is being done to address that problem? What if they aren't appropriate, will Zimmerman receive a fair trial? The situation seems to be getting worse and not better. The questions keep multiplying as do the numbers of people who have an unjustifiable confidence in their emotional convictions about the case.

However, this example is still notable:

15-year-old South Texas boy has been charged with nine counts of murder among other charges after a van he was driving crashed, killing nine of the suspected illegal immigrants packed inside.

Barrera said prosecutors would decide whether to try the boy as an adult.

I can't find any reports on this incident that explain why the boy was charged with murder. The article doesn't seem to imply that he intentionally crashed the vehicle. One assumes that its some sort of situation where people are charged with murder if someone dies as the consequence of a crime they are committing, or some other such creative legislating.

The fact remains, on the one hand we have a 15 year old who was immediately charged with murder apparently because he accidentally wrecked a car he was too young to know how to drive. On the other hand, we have a 28 year old who intentionally shot and killed an unarmed 17 year old and was not initially charged with anything.

Its easy to understand why people might feel that this does not add up.

The "prison for some, miniature American flags for others" policy mishmash that our state governments have cooked up doesn't really sit well when consequences don't seem to bear any relationship to intent or even to facts.

Zimmerman Martin case and American Justice

Rather than dying out in the dimly lit aftermath of a ginormous asteroid impact, dinosaurs on Earth may have instead spread to other planets and built a terrifying space-conquering empire.

Organic chemistry expert Prof Ronald Breslow has suggested from new research into DNA that the Jurassic Park monsters may in fact be living in highly evolved civilisations on other worlds - quite possibly with their own interstellar exploration programmes.

Death Star dinosaur aliens could rule galaxy • The Register

Pauvre Henri! C'est comme de Truffaut et Sartre. Les personne n'est pas understand le plight de le chat.

Henri 2, Paw de Deux - YouTube

You can easily find examples of this by searching twitter.

I recall conversations about the Titanic with older relatives when I was young. It was one of the great mysteries - a giant ship lost forever in the ocean. It seemed amazing that with all our modern technology we could not even find it - it spoke to a world that was beyond our control. One which our greatest accomplishments could not master.

They found it in 1985. I would have been 9. Those same older relatives were riveted. That was almost certainly the most read issue of National Geographic.

Then it was a movie, in 1997, and aspects of that movie become pop culture touchpoints. Media literate children certainly know some of the scenes in that movie even if they've never bothered to watch it, because they are constantly referenced.

But no one tells them the actual story of the Titanic. There is no mystery any more. Man seems a much greater threat to us in this era than nature.

The New Aesthetic — Twitter users discover the Titanic was real.

The Center for Democracy and Technology has a much more sane position on CISPA than the EFF. More here...

There is widespread agreement that ISPs and other operators of computer networks need clearer legal authority in order to be able to share with each other – and with the government – signatures and other information about suspected attacks on their networks. However, since we are talking about privately-owned and operated networks that carry personal communications, any sharing of information must be carefully controlled.

Lungren Cybersecurity Bill Takes Careful, Balanced Approach | Center for Democracy & Technology

I am seriously disappointed in this essay from the EFF about CISPA.

Under the proposed legislation, a company that protects itself or other companies against “cybersecurity threats” can “use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information to protect the rights and property” of the company under threat.

The intent of these bills is to enable the government to work with private companies to share information about APT and other internet security issues so that those companies can take action to protect themselves from attack by blocking those attacks on the network. Why is this a problem?

The EFF equates CISPA with SOPA and then engages in what I can only describe as a wide eyed conspiracy theory in which efforts to contain APT run off the rails and turn into a censorship system for the MPAA due to gross misinterpretations of words like "cybersecurity threat."

There are three problems with this.

1. The EFF's analysis bears so little resemblance to the actual intent of this bill that we cannot trust them. I don't know if this bill is good or bad, but I'm sure the EFF is totally wrong about it, which leaves me in a difficult position vis-a-vis both the bill and their analysis of future bills.

2. As the EFF's concerns bear no relationship to the intent of the bills, they could offer constructive suggestions for wording changes that would help contain the concerns they have without impacting the intent of the supporters of the bills. This ought to be a no brainer, but this kind of constructive discussion is evidently not happening.

3. SOPA supporters are out in force accusing those who opposed SOPA of spreading disinformation. By equating CISPA to SOPA, and spreading disinformation about CISPA, the EFF is playing right into the hands of those who support SOPA.

In other words, in one fell swoop, the EFF is damaging both the important work that has been done to oppose SOPA and the important work that needs to be done to protect the Internet from spies, and they have abandoned an opportunity to contribute constructively in doing so.

If the EFF becomes the kind of shrill activist group that you wish wasn't on your side, advocates of online civil liberties have got a serious problem.

The EFF is shooting everybody in the foot.

"It is my strong view that exceptions and limitations are just that -- they are important but they must be applied narrowly so as not to harm the proprietary rights of the songwriter, book author, or artist. Copyright is for the author first and the nation second."

How Can You Be Register Of Copyrights If You Don't Even Understand Copyright's Most Basic Purpose? | Techdirt

Under Customs authority, the Department of Homeland Security could inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace. Customs already looks online for child pornography crossing our virtual borders.

Does it? I'm fairly certain that FISA requires a warrant to spy on International telecommunications. Certainly, warrant in hand, customs might look for child pornography, but that is quite a different thing than the wholesale surveillance that Clarke is calling for. I think he is simply wrong here.

After all the hand wringing over the past few years regarding warrantless wiretapping of international telecommunications I can't imagine the Obama administration would call for it during an election year.

However, it remains the case that either its not OK for customs to go rummaging through hard drives when they are carried across the border or it is OK for customs to go rummaging through the same data when it crosses the same border over a wire. The idea that one of these things requires a warrant and the other requires absolutely no standard of suspicion makes absolutely no sense.

I think the problem is with the "anything goes" policy at the physical border and not the warrant requirement at the virtual one.

If the government wants to help fight APT on private networks they could, you know, start actually coordinating information with the private companies who protect those private networks from attack. No constitutional hang wringing would be required. So far, that isn't happening.

Richard Clarke calls for spying on the Internet to combat APT