“And I do believe in the ability to tell different degrees of “badness” from each other and to respond to them accordingly–though in the specific case of the girl, I really see not a lot of difference between handing her boyfriend the loaded gun during an armed robbery in progress and pulling the trigger herself.”

What you are claiming here makes no sense. Threatening a person with a gun is not the same thing as shooting a person with a gun. Handing a person a gun is not the same thing as shooting a gun.

You go on to say that, “what do we do about people who willingly take the life of other people for money they don’t need?”
At this point I don’t know what to say to you. When you are a kid living on the street you do indeed need money. While I understand that there have been cases where young men robbed and killed people for thrills, it is much rarer than you seem to think. Reality, as I mentioned before, is not like the movies, the teevee, or the stories you read in the newspapers.
We cannot control the actions of other people, nor is our judgement infallible.
Thousands of women are incarcerated all over this country for failing to prevent their husband or boyfriend from committing a crime. That is reality.

But I think if we’re going to do that, we should do that, and actually provide a means for that process to be helpful to someone. As it stands, the criminal justice system says, “Okay, lock them all up, then, for they are clearly Bad,” as if that solves anything. And, at the same time, we fight tooth and claw against any notion that institutions and people acting on their behalf should be held responsible for the inevitable—or at least highly foreseeable—consequences of their policies and decisions. Because to do otherwise would be to undermine the authority of those institutions, which obviously must be unassailable.

(I mean, haven’t you heard? Most guns never have to be fired. They’re deterrents! I mean, what would someone getting robbed do with a loaded gun during an armed robbery? Obviously, flail it around until the robber said, “clearly, your phallus is bigger than mine,” and left.)

I support the creation of a restorative justice system that is more concerned with effect than intent, that is more concerned with making people and communities whole and keeping them that way than it is with stabbing the bad people. I think starting by saying that individuals must be criminally responsible for all fallout of their actions is about the worst way to go about creating such a system.

“Also, carelessness and incompetence are not standards to be applied here, unless the conduct rises to the level of criminal acts, as defined by the law relating to each count charged”

means that police could be charged under a reckless homicide statute should they merit it. Surely that’s a sufficient level of liability?

That said: I don’t have a huge problem with the concept of felony murder. I tend to think that one commits a violent felony at one’s own peril. But Holle didn’t commit a violent felony. He lent his car to a bunch of idiots. His actions might have been a necessary cause for the death to occur, but they sure as fuck shouldn’t be a legal cause under any sane statute.