Man Literally Scares Grandmother to Death
People often use the phrase, “You scared me to death!” in a joking fashion, but authorities say that is literally what happened to a seventy-nine year old grandmother in North Carolina recently. Apparently, the elderly lady suffered a heart attack when a man broke into her home while looking for somewhere to hide after robbing a bank. The man did not call for help, and the lady died from the heart attack. Police say the man thus literally killed the grandmother without ever touching her. He was found guilty of killing someone by kidnapping them, which carries an automatic life sentence in North Carolina.
In Tennessee, the man would be charged much the same way. The law allows someone to be charged with first-degree murder in Tennessee if they kill someone during “the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any first degree murder, act of terrorism, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, theft, kidnapping, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect, rape of a child, aggravated rape of a child or aircraft piracy.”
This is known as the felony murder rule and it basically allows for the charging of first-degree murder against someone who takes the life of another under circumstances that would not ordinarily satisfy the “premeditated” and “intentional” requirements of first-degree murder but that the State of Tennessee has decided should be punished just as harshly. It also prevents people from carrying out a murder that would be first-degree murder under other circumstances and then avoiding the charge, for example, because they happened to do it by setting fire to the person’s house and claim they did not know that person was inside.
There are only three possible punishments for first-degree murder in Tennessee: life in prison with the possibility of parole, life in prison without the possibility of parole, and the death penalty.
Source: http://news.aol.com/article/larry-whitfield-receives-life-setence-in/778552
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