When Domestic Violence Victims Are Prosecuted as Accomplices
Pennsylvania and all other states have laws that allow individuals to be held legally accountable for crimes committed by others. If a group of individuals rob a bank and one of them shoots and kills a security guard, all of them could be charged with murder. Prosecutors like these laws because they allow them to exert a great deal of pressure on defendants who did not commit serious crimes and may be eager to escape punishment, but not all of the people charged under accomplice liability laws are getaway drivers or lookouts. In many cases, the defendants sent to prison for being accomplices are domestic violence victims who were under the control of their abusers.
Accomplice Liability
Accomplice liability is a legal concept that dates back over a thousand years. In 1020, a law was passed in England that allowed an entire family to be enslaved if one of its members was a thief. In the United States, the amount of involvement in a crime that would make a person an accomplice varies from state to state. The rules laid down by Pennsylvania law state that an individual is considered to be an accomplice if they solicit another person to commit a crime or aid in the planning or commission of a crime.
Accomplice liability laws were passed to ensure that all individuals connected with a crime are punished accordingly, but some of the people being prosecuted under them are unfortunately victims rather than perpetrators. When researchers from Mother Jones and the Marshall Project searched federal and state court records, they identified almost 100 cases that involved victims of domestic abuse who were sent to prison as accomplices. These offenders, almost all of whom were women, did not participate in the crimes their abusers committed, but they were prosecuted and sentenced because they did not prevent the crimes or report them to the police.
Life Without Parole
Accomplices often face the same punishments as perpetrators, which means domestic violence victims can be sent to prison for decades if their abusers commit serious offenses like murder in their presence. This is what happened in a case involving a Louisiana woman in 1985. The woman was sitting in a car when her abuser robbed and killed two people, but she was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The woman told the court that her abuser had threatened to kill her if she talked, and a witness testified that he knew of the threat. In other cases, women have been given long prison sentences for human trafficking even though they were trafficking victims themselves.
Unsympathetic Courts
Domestic violence victims often say that judges and lawyers do not understand what it is like to live in constant fear, and the outcomes of many accomplice liability cases seem to support this view. The psychological trauma that domestic violence victims suffer is poorly understood in legal circles, which can lead to questionable statements being made in court. Before he sentenced a domestic violence victim to up to 30 years behind bars for assisting her abuser during a string of robberies, a Michigan judge told her that she should have left the man when she had the chance. Judges in other cases have ruled that juries should not hear about abusive relationships. What the courts do not seem to realize is that these women face very real dangers. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about one-third of the approximately 5,000 women who were murdered in the United States in 2021 were domestic violence victims who were killed by their abusers.
Sobering Statistics
Determining how many domestic violence victims have been incarcerated for assisting with or concealing crimes committed by their abusers is difficult because the information is not tracked, but a handful of studies have shed at least some light on the issue. When researchers studied the case files of women serving life sentences in Michigan, they discovered that 60% of them had been convicted of murders committed by another person. Most of these perpetrators were abusers that the women had been romantically involved with. In a wider study of female inmates who had been convicted of murder or manslaughter, 13% of the women interviewed said that their abusers had committed the crimes they were serving time for.
Legislators Want to Be Tough on Crime
Laws that send people to prison for decades for crimes they did not commit should be criticized, but things become even more complicated when accomplices are involved. The laws dealing with accomplice liability were written to punish people who participate in or profit from criminal activity, and efforts to narrow their focus have been largely unsuccessful. This is because the offenses committed by domestic violence offenders are often serious, and lawmakers do not want to appear soft on crime. Attempts to add fairness by changing the way domestic violence victims are sentenced have been received more warmly by legislators, but they have still been rejected in several states.
More Lenient Sentencing and Early Release
Activists working to blunt the impact of accomplice liability laws in New York scored a victory in 2019 when lawmakers passed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. The law allows defense attorneys and prosecutors to revisit cases involving domestic violence victims and seek sentencing relief if they committed a crime while in an abusive relationship and the abuse was a significant contributing factor. One of the first people to receive sentencing relief under the law was a woman who was convicted of murder in 1999 when she was 16 years old. The victim was in a relationship with a minister who groomed, sexually abused and trafficked her. She was released from prison in 2022 after serving 23 years. Efforts to pass similar laws have failed in Louisiana, Oregon and Minnesota.
Legislators in Illinois passed a law in 2015 that allows domestic violence victims to seek resentencing if their crimes were connected to an abusive relationship, but the number of inmates resentenced or released under the law is not being tracked. If it were, the number of reduced sentences would likely be fairly low because the Illinois law does not allow judges to deviate from mandatory minimum sentencing requirements. In New York, judges can ignore sentencing guidelines and choose to release or resentence domestic violence victims based on the facts.
Some Accomplices Deserve Sympathy
Individuals who conspire with others to commit serious crimes should be punished, but some accomplices deserve sympathy. Domestic violence victims who fear death or physical harm should not be treated like the members of a criminal gang, but they often are. This is why any person who is accused of being a conspirator or accomplice should consult with an experienced Pennsylvania criminal defense attorneys before accepting any plea agreements.
The team of Pennsylvania criminal defense attorneys at Bauer, Scanlon & Wigginton have been advocating on behalf of people who found themselves on the wrong side of the law for decades, and they know that prosecutors often have strong negotiating positions when they deal with alleged accomplices. If you are being investigated by the police or have been charged with a crime, you can schedule a consultation to speak with one of our attorneys in our Media office by calling (610) 590-5092. Alternatively, complete and submit our online form to arrange a consultation.