should juveniles charged with felony murder be waived into the adult criminal justice system?
Juveniles are more likely than adult offenders to commit crimes in groups. This tendency makes the juvenile offender more susceptible to the felony murder rule. In three experiments we tested the notion that juveniles arrested and charged under the felony murder rule would be transferred into the adult criminal justice system based on an equalistic (i.e. the application of the felony murder rule) or a proportional (i.e. the just deserts philosophy) rule. Participants read case descriptions of an armed robbery (no death, accidental death, or intentional death) in which defendants had different levels of involvement in the crime (getaway driver, lookout, sidekick, or triggerman). Involvement was manipulated within subjects in Experiment 1 (i.e., participants rendered judgments for each defendant) and between subjects in Experiment 2 (i.e., each participant judged one of the defendants). The participants in Experiments 1 and 2 were undergraduate psychology students selected from a public
