If you didn't know we have criminal merchandise available on our website, you can get T-shirts, tote bags and stickers and every now and then we've limited edition merchandise available to head did. This is criminal dotcom slash shop to get criminal merch now that this is criminal dotcom slash shop. Thanks very much for your support. How did you meet Jaclyn Reynolds? We've been friends since we were in seventh grade. We were in the same grammar school together. We graduated and we went to high school together and would friends.

And we said that our friendship never, never ended. We just evolved as the years went, all the older women.

This is Lavanya Noble King. She lives in Chicago, where she also grew up and where she met her best friend, Jacqueline Reynolds. Did you when you first remember meeting her? Did you know right away that you were going to be friends?

Oh, from that day, the first day we met one another, we've been friends from that very first day when we were waiting to get our classes that I spoke to her first. We always talk about that. And I said, hi, what's your name? And at lunchtime, I went home with her. And we've been fast friends ever since. You know, over the years, of course, we've met other friends and they became very close to us to and to this day, it's like about five of us that became very close.

But Jackie was the kind of friend that I never was that had to be jealous of her with another friend because she never, never, not acknowledged who I was to her and how much she cared about me and how much she loved me. And she was saying, I love my wife, I love Lavanya, you know, and would kiss me. You know, I you know, I always think that that was the thing. She was a big kisser in a big hug.

They stayed best friends for more than 40 years and lived in the same apartment building.

We made the decision, even though I have a husband, we made a pact that we need to have emergency. We put each other's names down. And that's right. And that's how you know, that's how we did it.

On May 8th, 2013, Lavanya Noble King was home in Chicago when the doorbell rang and I went to the door and it was two gentlemen down there with long black coats on and they said, my name is said they need to speak to me. I knew it was some kind of police authority of some. So I buzz them in. And when they came upstairs, they said, Lavanya, we need to speak to you. There's been an accident, a fatal accident.

And at the time of them talking, I looked and one of them, he had a he had like like a folder. But on top of the folder was Jackie's purse. And he was talking and I stopped him and said, why do you have Jackie's purse? And he Celebi. And I stopped. But I said, why do you have my friend's purse? And he said, Lavanya, there's been an accident. And I said, Did she leave me?

And he said, yes. And I went up on the kitchen table. That's where they got me from. I know. I went up under the table. Lavanya, no booking, was told that Jacqueline Reynolds had died while she was driving through the intersection of 76 and Yates Boulevard in Chicago. She'd been hit and killed by police car.

I was told that the police came zooming through and when she got in the middle of the road, a police car hit her up and killed her. Anthony. So so you were told that the that the cop car that had hit Jacklin was chasing someone. What did they say?

Yeah, they said they were pursuing someone and that they you know, that's when Jackie got hit. They were pursuing a car that was ahead of them. That's what they told us. According to Chicago police, the officers were chasing a 20 year old named Timothy Jones, Timothy Jones had just gotten home to Chicago from college at Lincoln University in Missouri, where he played football and was studying to be an accountant. According to Timothy Jones, on May 7th, 2013, he went to the apartment of a man named Lee Davis.

He testified that he and a friend had sold Lee Davis credit cards and that Lee Davis owed them seven thousand dollars. He'd gone to the apartment to collect the debt and Lee Davis asked him to come back the next day. So the next day, on May 8th, Timothy Jones and his friend went back to the apartment on the plan with Williams going over there to get the money back over.

And when we got there, he was saying that he had a lot of it, but he didn't have money. There was a disagreement and Timothy Jones took a Nike shoe box, an iPad and an iPhone, he dropped his ID without realizing it.

Lee Davis's girlfriend called the police officer in the mall, even though it's later like on as was coming out. What was your thought?

I mean, I was your thought. I better run. You know, what happened immediately. Did you start running out? Did you get into a car? What was your what was your first thought when you said the police are coming off, find out what they are and I just want to get away?

Really. I just want to get in my life. I didn't want to get away. You know, I think Timothy knew that, you know. Being from the south side of Chicago, growing up in the environment that he grew up in, it, you know, you run from the police because they don't they don't do you any they don't mean you any good attorney, Keith Spence. And, you know, he knew that the police were called on him.

He knew that, you know, they did, you know, go into the apartment. They did run out the apartment. They did have a pair of the guy's shoes with them. So, you know, I think that was enough to make him make them, you know, make them run. A police officer named Ronald Pittman arrived on the scene and reported by radio that he had seen a man later identified as Timothy Jones fleeing the scene, holding a gun.

Did you have a weapon on you? No, no. No weapon at all. He said this from the beginning.

He says he and his friend got into a car with a third man and drove away from the apartment and he says they stopped when they hit a parked car. Officer Pitman's police car was right behind them. And Timothy says Officer Pittman pointed a gun at them. Timothy got out of the car with his hands up. His friends ran away. Timothy got back into the car, into the driver's seat and drove away. Officer Pittman got back into his police car and followed Timothy.

Did you have a plan about where you were going to drive? Did you just say, I'm just going to get as far away from here as possible?

Did you know what streets you were going to go up to? I was trying to get the far behind, like, I mean, obviously I will drive home, so I guess you could say that. But as far as like at that moment, I was distracted from the police.

The officer Pittman later said that he kept following the car because he believed Timothy Jones was armed. Two other officers, Officer James Sevak and his partner, Officer Highroad Valeriano, joined the pursuit in their police SUV. Officer Cicek was driving. Timothy Jones drove east on 76 Street and crossed the intersection at Yates Boulevard. He told us that the light was red and that he drove through it. The police officers were behind him on 76 Street. And then according to Timothy Jones, all of a sudden he looked around and the police weren't following him anymore, he says he thought the chase was over and that he'd gotten away.

He parked his car and started walking. A police officer approached him and asked him his name. He said Timothy Jones, which match the name on an ID. Police had found nearly daviss apartment. Timothy Jones says it wasn't until he got to the police station that he found out that he was being charged with murder. He didn't even know someone had died. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. I had no idea until I was in the police station and I told her that I was being charged with a murder and I was being charged for the murder.

I know I didn't kill anybody. I know I didn't come close to killing anybody. So I had no idea what happened until I was done for these least. Here's what he learned. About seven seconds after he ran the red light on 76 Street at Gates Boulevard, the police SUV entered the intersection, also running the red light and hitting Jacqueline Reynolds car, killing her instantly. Because the police hit and killed Jacqueline Reynolds during their pursuit of Timothy Jones, Timothy Jones was charged with her murder.

So felony murder is one of the three.

Bases or theories of liability for murder in American law? Law Professor Guiora Binder teaches at the University of Buffalo School of Law.

One is is straightforward and familiar. You intentionally kill someone that's murder. Another form of murder is based on culpable risk taking.

So if you cause someone's death recklessly, very recklessly or recklessly for a very bad purpose, that's also murder in most states, in most American jurisdictions. And the third form of murder is murder in the course of crime.

And so if you cause death in the course of certain grievous felonies in most American states and in the federal system, that's murder as well.

Felony murder is distinctly American. Almost every other country that has had similar laws on the books has abolished them. But in America, according to Guiora Binder, 41 states have some kind of felony murder rule in place, part of what's happened to felony murder liability is that it has expanded over the course of its history.

In large measure, because our ideas about what it means to kill have expanded greatly, so an English law, you know, and in the early 19th century in the United States to kill meant that you attacked somebody with a weapon and they died. Later, we began to think that killing just was sort of an old fashioned way of saying you caused a result, you caused a harmful result. You caused death and our ideas about how you could cause a results expanded.

So that, you know, we began to think about very long and elaborate causal chains. Under the felony murder rule, someone can be convicted of murder even if they didn't intend to kill anyone and even if they weren't behaving recklessly, the prosecution only needs to show that the defendant participated in a felony that resulted in a death.

Not all felonies qualify, only ones that are categorized as dangerous or specified in statutes in Timothy Jones's case, he was charged with home invasion, armed robbery and residential burglary. All three are on the list for felony murder in Illinois. The felony murder rule in Illinois, where Timothy Jones was charged, is one of the broadest reaching in the country. And it includes a feature that many other states do not a feature of felony murder or liability.

That's very controversial is the idea that if you participate in the felony, even if you're not the person who actually kills another person, you can be liable. So even though it was police officers James Sciver check and high over Ariano who hit Jacqueline Reynolds car, Timothy was charged with her murder. If Timothy had been charged in a different state, this might not have been the case. We looked at all sorts of cases of felony murder from all over the country just last year in Illinois, man claimed he saw a group of six teenagers attempting to break into his car.

He shot and killed one of them, a 14 year old. But then under the felony murder rule, the other five teenagers were charged with the murder of their friend. The man who actually shot the gun was not charged. Ultimately, the murder charges against the teenagers were dropped amid pressure from civil rights groups. In 2001, a man in Oklahoma gave his 13 year old sister a liter of vodka. She shared it with her friends, one of whom died from alcohol poisoning.

The man was convicted, a felony murder. And in New York in the 1980s, there's the story of one man breaking into another man's house, the homeowner had a gun and told the intruder to get on the ground.

After the police arrived, the homeowner had a heart attack and died. The prosecution argued that the stress of the attempted burglary caused the heart attack.

So we have expansive rules of causation and then we have expansive rules of accomplice liability. So if you intentionally aid or or encourage a crime, you're responsible for that crime. But what most jurisdictions do, as they say, if you intentionally aid or encourage the underlying crime, the robbery or the rape or the arson, if you are then liable for. Any death that's foreseeable as a consequence of that. There's a famous case from Florida in 2003, one day early in the morning, a 20 year old man named Ryan Holley loaned his car to a friend.

He'd been up late the night before drinking. And he reportedly heard his friend talking about stealing a safe from a man who sold drugs. Holly later said he was drunk and tired and didn't know if his friend was serious. He went to bed. His friend, along with three others, drove Holly's car to the house where they were going to steal the safe. During the burglary, one of those four men beat a young woman to death with a shotgun.

Holly was at home when the crime was committed. But because he had allegedly heard his friend planning the burglary and given him his car keys anyway, he was convicted under the felony murder rule and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At all, his trial in 2004, the prosecutor said no car, no crime, no car, no murder. Guéra Binder says there are cases where the felony murder rule intuitively makes sense, for example, if someone intentionally set a fire to a building to collect insurance money and people in surrounding buildings died because of that fire. People in favor of the felony murder doctrine, including some victims rights advocates, argue that people who choose to commit dangerous crimes know that it's a possibility that innocent people could die and the harsh punishment acts as a kind of deterrent.

I mean, it's it's a it's a lot to get your head around me to think about. Being found criminally liable for the death of someone you may never have laid your eyes on and that their death actually, if so little circumstances are gone a million different ways or one different way, this would not be the case in the case of Timothy Jones if the cop had.

Been looking up and up and driving so fast had changed lanes, X, Y, Z. It's certainly shocking and and troubling that liability depends so much on luck.

So and, you know, and then yes, and then we have cases where death wouldn't have occurred without a decision, maybe a bad decision, maybe an irresponsible decision by police, but it's what the argument is that it's the person who started the chain of events that is liable.

Even if they're not the ones who hit the actual person or caused the death, they started the chain of events which then made the police officer start speeding and that reckless driving. But they're the ones who started the events, right.

Rather than the officer getting charged for, you know, a high speed chase or for shooting another officer.

It's it's the arrestee that's charged.

And. The trial begins for a man accused of leading police on a chase that turned deadly embassy Buckeye's Marion Brooks is in our newsroom tonight with more on this case Marion Allison.

Twenty two year old Timothy Jones is accused of robbing a family inside their South Side apartment, but he's on trial for murder after a high speed police chase killed fifty six year old Jacqueline Reynolds in May of 2013.

Prosecutors say Jones and two other men forced their way into an apartment to steal money, shoes and an iPad, according to the state. After the suspects left, police took chase as both Jones and a police SUV sped down 76 street. They blew through a red light and the police SUV slammed into Jacqueline Reynolds car.

Timothy Jones's trial began on February 17th, 2015, almost two years after he was arrested. The prosecution had to prove two things to convict Timothy Jones under the felony murder rule.

The timothee had committed a felony and that Jacqueline Reynolds died in a chain of events started by that felony, here's prosecutor Barbara Bailey during opening statements when the defendant went out on that street that day when she went to that apartment to commit those crimes.

He was making conscious choices and she was setting in motion a series of events, a series of events that ended in a murder. The prosecution argued that had Timothy Jones not gone to that apartment that day and not run from the police, Jacqueline Reynolds would still be alive. Attorney Keith Spence represented Timothy Jones in trial.

Our position was there was no felony to connect him to the felony murder.

Timothy Jones is felony charges were home invasion, armed robbery and residential burglary. Keith Spence argued the Timothy shouldn't have been charged with a home invasion because he didn't break in. He knew the man who lived in the apartment had gone to high school together, and Timothy had just been at his apartment one day before. Keith Spence also argued that the armed robbery charge didn't make any sense because Timothy didn't have a gun.

Other police officer, Ronald Pitman testified that he'd seen Timothy with a gun. No gun was ever found on Timothee or in the car.

You see, the Chicago Police Department would like to put this on you.

Timothy's defense attorney, Keith Spence, in his opening statement.

But Chicago Police Department is the organization that has the duty to protect us from dangerous situations, including high speed chases. They certainly cannot even attempt to show up for connection with the first degree murder of Jacqueline Rip's.

Keith Spence also argued that because Timothy Jones had already been stopped by the police once before the crash, the police had broken the chain of events linking the alleged felonies to Jacqueline Reynolds death. And finally, he argued that the police had no justification to pursue Timothy Jones the way that they did because Timothy did not have a gun. And they could have picked up Timothy at any time because police already had his name on the ID they'd found at Lee Davis's apartment.

Keith Spence said it was the reckless behavior of the police that killed Jacqueline Reynolds, not Timothy Jones. What was the trial like? Oh, hey, the emotional and emotional, the scary Timothy Jones moment, like all of it was like, how can I put that in the water? It was like a life changing thing, really, like. But for me to sit down there, I can barely explain it. It was like session about like. They told me painting me as like this horrible person.

The whole town is like. Like I say, I'm not that I don't feel like I have I have a hard life. I know that. And I'm not like, yeah, there's no point to that, I think. But I finally have a complete animal or a menace to society where the only reason is that they take me. And they broke their own protocol.

As they deliberated, members of the jury asked the judge a question. Was it possible to find Timothy guilty of one of the charges without the murder charge automatically applying? And they wanted to, but they were instructed that they could because it's it's not how this particular statute is written. You know, it's an automatic first degree murder. I think the jury was looking for a way to address that and not find him guilty of first degree murder. But the instructions left him with very little movement on it.

So they had no power to just they sure find what we want him home invasion. But we don't believe that this felony murder charge is fair or right. There was no way to disconnect it, you know.

No. And that's what we were we were trying to trying to address and trying to get at the time. And Judge Wilson just would not you know, he he you know, and I don't necessarily fault him for it for the way he ruled on it.

I mean, that's just the way the law is written. The jury found Timothy Jones not guilty of home invasion and not guilty of armed robbery. They did find him guilty of residential burglary and with that felony conviction, guilty of first degree murder.

During sentencing, Jacqueline Reynolds, best friend, Lavanya Noble King, who we heard from at the beginning of the story, testified on Timothy Jones's behalf.

I came to play the centrist and only get, you know, to speak in behalf of Timothy to to try to get mercy for him because he didn't hit her.

So you didn't want Timothy punished for Jacqueline's death? Of course not. He didn't hit Jack. Timothy did not hit Jacqui, his car didn't touch her. He didn't even know Jackie had gotten hit. But when I got on stand, I asked the judge to please be lenient and give mercy to this young man. He was young, had a chance at his life. They could have they could have easily. He could have did it the maximum. He should have gave him what they give people for manslaughter.

And they're not saying that he did it, but because he caused the accident, never a first degree murder. Do you ever think about what Jackie would be saying to you about your health being trying to help Timothy and not she would have said do it?

LAVANYA And that's why I had no problem speaking about it. This is my best friend. Had it been different, I would never have come and pass what I know she would. I knew she would have felt that way. And that's why I spoke up. And that's why I came into this subcommittee, because, like I told the prosecutors, you don't you defined about Jackie with you all is not about Jackie, but for Jackie, it would be about this young man.

And that is for her to speak up for her in behalf of her. I'm her best friend and to all of her dreams, aspirations and shortcomings and all as she would not have wanted Timothy to do this time, she wouldn't have wanted that. Timothy Jones was sentenced to 28 years in prison. He's currently seven years into a sentence at Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois. Jacqueline Reynolds family sued the city of Chicago and the two officers involved in the crash alleging that they violated procedures for police chases.

And as part of that civil case, new information came to light, an expert said GPS records showed that Officer Sciver check was driving as fast as 74 miles per hour and that just before the crash, he was driving a minimum of 68 miles per hour. This is different than what Officer Savchuk said at Timothy Jones's trial when he testified he'd been driving at about 30 miles per hour.

Police in Chicago are typically required to apply a balancing test when deciding to engage in a high speed chase to take into account the traffic conditions of the area and the risk to bystanders and to decide whether the need to catch the suspect outweighs the risk of the chase. Officer Savchuk testified at Timothy's trial that he did not think the chase was too dangerous and that he was pursuing a man who was armed. The city admitted liability in the family's lawsuit and three point five dollars million was awarded to Jacqueline Reynolds estate.

The Chicago Police Department's Traffic Review Board issued a reprimand to officer severe check and requested that he attend driving school. We contacted the Chicago Police Department for the story, but haven't heard back. Timothy Jones is continuing to appeal his conviction. If he serves his full sentence, he'll be in prison until he's 48 years old. Well, what's the memory that you think about maybe that happened, you know, a memory that was right before this whole thing began, when you were just the guy who was going to college and.

You know. I I think all the time I had this problem, I want to make clear that she was telling me how proud of how proud he was for me, graduating high school and college right from the get go. I was like the whole thing, the whole thing. And obviously thinking like and if people that are going to be a whole different life that I believe. Criminalists created by Lauren Spor and me Neede Wilson is our senior producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson and Aaron Waed, audio mix by Rob Byers.

Special thanks to Michelle Harris, Matt Majak, Carolyn Felt and Alice Wilder. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this is criminal dotcom. We're on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show.

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio WNYC, where a proud member of Radio Topia from PUREX, a collection of the best shows around shows like 99 percent Invisible. They've just published their first book, The 99 percent Invisible City. It's a beautifully designed and illustrated field guide to the hidden world of everyday design. If you're already 99 percent invisible fan or if you've ever found yourself wondering what do those bright squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?

Or Why don't you see those iconic metal fire escapes on new buildings? Or how to car dealerships become home to those dancing inflatable figures? Then the 99 percent invisible city is for you. You can find links to purchase the physical book and the audio book read by Roman Mars at ninety nine Pigou Slash book. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. Radio to from your ex.