Williamson County Attorney John Bradley does not understand what the Law of Parties is, according to this quote in the Austin American-Statesman: “To exempt all defendants in capital cases because they didn’t pull the trigger “is irrational,” said Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. “Under that reasoning, Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson could never get the death penalty. You have to look at the facts of each case … whether their participation merits holding them culpable”.
HB 2267 said
(b) A defendant who is found guilty in a capital felony case
only as a party under Section 7.02(b), Penal Code, may not be
sentenced to death, and the state may not seek the death penalty in
any case in which the defendant’s liability is based solely on that
section.
People like Hitler, Manson and Osama bin Laden would not have been prosecuted under Section 7.02(b).
For a County Attorney to make that statement is the most absurd comment by a legal professional that I have ever heard of. It is no wonder that prosecutors were able to get Perry to threaten to veto HB 2267 if they were telling lies like Bradley.
The Law of Parties in section 7.02 (b) says “If, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it, if the offense was committed in furtherance of the unlawful purpose and was one that should have been anticipated as a result of the carrying out of the conspiracy”.