In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz approved several pieces of legislation that allows for prosecutors and defendants to ask for a reduced sentences for those currently incarcerated Along with the “Prosecutor-Initiated Sentence Adjustment”, lawmakers and Walz signed off on the Felony Murder Reform Act, which was recently used to scrap the life sentence imposed a decade ago on Noah Anthony Charles King in the murder of William Grahek.
Kayla VonBerge, a friend of Grahek’s, recently penned an op-ed for the Duluth News-Tribune that called the law an “affront to gun control,” which caught my attention. As I read her column, though, I was struck by the fact that VonBerge seems to understand that violent criminals like the ones who are responsible for her friend’s death don’t pay much attention to gun control laws to begin with.
I believe the heart of the new law is good. The fact Judge Leslie Beiers removed Noah Anthony Charles King’s life sentence is not. King didn’t have a gun, only a wrench, for the dog. But he knew his accomplices did. And, after Will was shot, he left him there to die. Will would have had more of a chance of surviving if there was no gun at all, and King’s punishment should reflect that, I feel.
This judgment works against gun control in this state. We shouldn’t accept, socially, that there are people among us who do not understand the deadly force of a firearm. We should not give passes to anyone who views guns as tools to take things from other people. We should teach every one of our children about the power of a gun and reinforce a culture of good behavior around them. It needs to be clear that bad behavior with a gun might lead to murder and then, possibly, to life imprisonment. This would, of course, only matter to people who care about following the law.
All three of the men on that February day in 2017 were convicted felons who probably shouldn’t have been possessing a gun anyway.
Not probably. As convicted felons they were not allowed to possess a firearm or a round of ammunition. But as VonBerge herself acknowledges, that only matters to people who care about the law. King and his accomplices didn’t care about the law forbidding murder, so of course they paid no mind to the statute barring them from possessing guns.
In her column, VonBerge rightfully called out criminal justice “reformer” and University of Minnesota law professor JaneAnne Murray for saying that some murders are “just really cases that are botched burglaries and botched robberies,” as if that matters to the family and friends of the slain. VonBerge believes Murray’s “attitude treats criminals as if they are genuinely incapable of controlling their actions,” and I think that’s absolutely right.
Did Judge Beiers believe that, because of his life to that point, King was unable to make another choice that day? My perspective, as a mom raising sons, is that he and his accomplices had a thousand opportunities to stop themselves. They could have left the guns at home (one of them a stolen gun, according to testimony), gone to get ice cream instead, or turned around after reaching the house. But they did not, and the actions they did take led to the loss of a wonderful human life.
All three defendants had extensive criminal histories prior to their arrest for Grahek’s murder. King, who was 18-years-old at the time of his arrest, already had an adult conviction for aiding and abetting felony theft and was facing trial on a charge of second-degree burglary, but he was also convicted as a juvenile for first-degree aggravated robbery.
King arguably should have been behind bars instead of being a free man when he participated in the robbery and killing of Grahek, but thanks to the state’s criminal justice system he had been spared incarceration.
VonBerge is right to be angry about King’s reduced sentence, but the problems with Minnesota’s treatment of violent criminals doesn’t start with the Felony Murder Reform Act. And I’d argue that law isn’t an affront to gun control, as VonBerge claims. It’s an affront to the victims of these homicides, and to the living who still mourn their deaths.
The idea that gun control laws will automatically make us safer, on the other hand, is an affront to common sense. Her friends’ killers weren’t able to legally possess a gun, yet they did. They weren’t supposed to steal a firearm, yet one of them apparently did (or managed to acquire a stolen gun on the black market). Yes, the criminal justice system failed to deliver justice for King’s earlier crimes, but Minnesota’s gun control laws also failed to protect Grahek from King and his cohorts.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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