I'm pretty sure on L&O, "felony murder" means someone died while you were committing the felony, whether or not you meant for them to die. I'm not sure if the thing about everyone being equally guilty is true, or a lie they use to break the weak team member.

If someone dies during the commission of a felony, whether the conduct of the criminal was directly related or not, everyone who is charged with the felony can also be charged/convicted of felony murder. This is generally true whether a kidnapping victim accidentally suffocates in a trunk, a bank patron has a heart attack during a robbery, or a guard is shot during an armored car heist.

ION, now I'm scared of being trapped in an elevator: [link]

Damn. That elevator-trappage incident totally fucked up his life.

(Am now earwormed with a slow, mournful version of Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator".... oh, and there was some '70s hit about being stuck in an elevator with someone of the opposite sex....)

NILLY! I'm so sorry you missed the wedding, but... will you be hanging around for a bit? I'm about to upload a couple of Matilda pictures I took just for you. (running away now to take care of it, but I'll be back with links ASAP)

You're half right.

Woo hoo!

And then I realized that I love tank-tops, and I don't care what Trinny and Susannah say about women with not-really-skinny-arms wearing them. I like how they look on me, and I love the cleavage.

So I'm kind of torn.

There was a US-version What Not To Wear one time with a young woman who was Mormon, and had grown up dressing modestly, but I don't think she was all that religious anymore. But she was still concerned about modesty. It was interesting what they did with her -- they got her into a pencil skirt (fairly tight), but sewed up the slit, like that. Now this doesn't seem all that related to what you were saying, but I think it's a similar conflict of how to walk the line when you're making each choice yourself. If that makes sense.

I'm not sure if the thing about everyone being equally guilty is true, or a lie they use to break the weak team member.

I think it varies a little from state to state, but yes, if you are involved in a felony, and anybody committing the felony with you murders someone, you are just as culpable as if you had pulled the trigger yourself.

at least in Israel, it's quite rare to find a non-religious girl wearing a skirt, or wearing it without a very revealing top, in order to indicate that she's not, of all things, religious

So very true. I started to buy skirts lately, but I still don't wear them, and didn't think about wearing them without some revealing top. However, I never felt like I'm doing this so I won't be considered religious, but more because that's the way I think it look good. And that, I think, comes from the society I grew up in.

I'm pretty sure on L&O, "felony murder" means someone died while you were committing the felony, whether or not you meant for them to die. I'm not sure if the thing about everyone being equally guilty is true,

It's TV true, anyway. And there are, IIRC, RL people on death row on felony murder charges, so it's not like it's a lesser charge or anything.

there's a rule that men shouldn't wear women's clothes and women shouldn't wear men's clothes.

There's a famous divorce case, from Dark Ages Iceland, that hinges on this kind of rule, as a matter of law. A woman wanted to get divorced, so she made her husband a shirt and told him to put it on without looking at it. He put it on, and everyone saw it was a women's-style shirt, and thus the woman could divorce her husband, with damages, for transvestism.

The needle is mightier than the sword!!

JZ! Matilda pictures for me? For meMeME? For reals?

I've been trying to decide what to do. Whether to go home to cleaning (hi-fiving Shir) or grading or actually working. But that's it. That settles it. I'm right here.

Maybe less of a thing here, since the division isn't so stark. I mean, I wear a skirt almost every day, and it's barely remarked upon.

Oh, absolutely. I loved the way women wear skirts because they like it, think it's pretty, or whatever other reason, without needing to carry with them a sign of "Don't worry, I'm not religious, all is well". Which is pretty sad, IMHO.

So interesting! I think what's especially interesting for me is learning what the rules actually are, because what I mostly know is how they look from the outside.

See, for me it's interesting to see how the rules look from the outside!

I never would have thought of the man's clothes/woman's clothes thing. (Also the rules about which animals are kosher being related to characteristics, not actual animals, so you can figure out any new animal you come across. Fascinating!)

It's even more complicated than that, because you have to have an ongoing tradition of eating those animals, for them to be considered as kosher these days (and the names used in biblical and talmudic times are rarely describing the same animals as today, even when using the very same words).

Jesse, I still remember how, when I was walking around in NYC with you, you were confused with the whole "OK, you washed your hands before we ate *this*, but didn't wash them before we ate *that* - are you trying to cheat G-d or something?"

it's all about what you're showing - from the inside

Oh, totally. You can dress based on the most strict rules (way more strict than how I dress), and still radiate something that nobody would describe as modest (I'm not trying to be judgmental here, in case it wasn't clear - it's just a state of something I think is true. I hope it comes out as such).

Modesty - in the Jewish meaning, of course - is a state of mind, not just a bunch of rules of what yes-or-not to wear.

There's two different theories of liability at work here. It sounds like in Cold Case that the murder was intentional. In that case, everyone is liable through vicarious liability theories like conspiracy or aiding/abetting. The actual perpetrator may be punished differently but it's true that the liability is the same. I imagine they are trying to find the perpetrator to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it.

Felony murder involves an unintended killing. An accidental death is bumped up to a murder if it occurs during the commission of a felony. And presumably vicarious theories might apply there too, though actually they don't have to-- you were robbing a bank and a death occurred, so felony murder; there doesn't have to be a conspiracy element.

ETA: now I remember. My crim law professor was particularly incensed about using vicarious liability to put someone on death row-- so not only did they not intend the death, they didn't even principally commit the felony. If the bank manager has a heart attack, the getaway driver can get the chair. It's incredibly unjust but there's no one out there to change the law.