The Sentencing Project draws attention to the troubling fallout of the felony murder rule, a relic of English law that still governs decisions in federal courts and in nearly every state, save for two.
When he was nineteen, Jamie Meade took part in a robbery that ended in a fatality. The person who actually fired the shot, his partner in crime, claimed it was an accident. Nevertheless, Meade was found guilty of felony murder and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole, while the shooter pleaded guilty to lesser charges and got twelve years. When Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer commuted Meade’s sentence last year, he had already served 31 years. By contrast, the man who fired the gun—who spent ten years in prison—has been free since 2008.
Clearly unjust outcomes like these stem from laws that treat participants in felonies as murderers whenever a death occurs, even if they did not intend, anticipate, or cause that outcome. A new report from the Sentencing Project spotlights the perverse effects of the felony murder rule—a remnant of British jurisprudence that remains in federal courts and in all but two states nearly seven decades after the U.K. abandoned it.
Felony murder statutes “violate the principle of proportional sentencing, which is supposed to punish crimes based on their severity,” the study’s researchers say. “With about one in six people in U.S. prisons serving a life term, bold action is needed to curb extreme prison terms such as those imposed for felony murder. These laws run counter to public safety, fiscal responsibility, and justice.”
Hawaii and Kentucky are the only states without felony murder statutes. Of the 48 states that do have them, ten impose a mandatory life-without-parole sentence on any adult convicted of felony murder, a standard also imposed by federal law. Eleven states mandate LWOP for certain felony murder convictions, while 18 allow it and nine do not. The report notes that “roughly half of U.S. states permit death sentences for unintentional killings under felony murder laws.”
Although national data on individuals serving LWOP for felony murder are not available, indications suggest they constitute a sizable share of such penalties. As of 2019, the researchers report, a quarter of LWOP inmates in Michigan and Pennsylvania—more than 1,000 people in each state—were convicted of felony murder.
The counterintuitive effects of felony murder laws extend beyond treating co-conspirators as harshly as actual killers (or, in Meade’s situation, perhaps even more so). “Participants in a group engaged in a felony can be charged with murder when someone outside the group—such as a police officer or a victim—kills,” the report notes. If a police officer confronts a gang of burglars and fatally shoots one of them, the others can face murder charges. An accomplice can similarly be charged when police kill a robber. Felony murder charges can also be used against friends, relatives, or drug suppliers whose products contribute to a death by overdose.
The moral premise of these laws is that those who choose to commit a felony should be held responsible for the deadly consequences that may arise, even if they did not intend or foresee them. Yet the risk of such an outcome is often small in many cases.
A Chicago study from the early 1980s found that about 0.6% of reported robberies led to homicide, and the mortality rate from reported burglaries was under 0.02%. The report adds that death is not a foreseeable consequence of sharing or selling drugs, since drug use rarely results in death.
The report also highlights a peculiar wrinkle produced by felony murder laws: in some states, an assault that results in death can qualify as the underlying felony, thereby obscuring the line between intentional and unintentional homicide. This is the same dynamic seen in the Derek Chauvin case, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd; although Chauvin did not intend to kill Floyd, he was convicted of murder for reckless conduct that resembled manslaughter more than a willful killing.
Something similar occurred with Jonathan Miller, a Georgia teenager who was convicted of murder and sent to prison for life after a fight in which he punched another teenager, Josh Belluardo, in the back of the head. Although that blow proved fatal, a medical examiner testified that the punch had only a 1-in-2,300 chance of rupturing the vessel that led to Belluardo’s brain bleed.
Apart from routinely imposing penalties that are out of proportion, felony murder laws tend to fuel coercive plea bargaining. Prosecutors “use felony murder charges to push for plea deals,” the study notes. When a felony murder charge is on the table, defendants often feel compelled to forgo trial and plead guilty to lesser charges, which still carry lengthy sentences that can be disproportionate to the underlying conduct. Since prosecutors can obtain a murder conviction without proving recklessness, let alone any intent to kill, “fighting a felony murder charge at trial can seem virtually impossible.”
Further, the report contends that felony murder statutes drain taxpayers’ money by keeping people locked up long after they would likely commit new crimes, since recidivism declines sharply with age. Nor does the threat of such sentences provide meaningful deterrence, given that most people do not expect to be caught, are unaware of relevant penalties, or commit crimes under the influence of substances or while experiencing mental health problems.
The recommendation is for lawmakers to repeal felony murder statutes and to punish these offenses by applying the constituent parts—typically a felonious act and an unintended killing. If outright repeal is not feasible, the authors propose several reforms aimed at reducing the injustices associated with felony murder.
“Jurisdictions should discard the most extreme penalties—death and LWOP—for felony murder, and ensure that felony-murder convictions carry penalties that are lighter than those for intentional murders,” the study argues. “Jurisdictions should remove felony-murder applicability to predicate offenses where death risk is extremely low, including robbery, burglary, and drug-law violations. Assault should not serve as a predicate felony to prevent extending murder liability to unintentional killings. Moreover, killings by individuals who were not involved in the underlying felony—such as a police officer or a victim—should not subject those who committed the offense to felony-murder charges.”
The Sentencing Project also urges prosecutors to reform charging and plea practices that exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities, such as overly broad charging of accomplices and disproportionately harsh plea offers to people of color. It calls for jurisdictions to permit judicial review of sentences for individuals who pled to lesser offenses because they faced the threat of murder sentences under expansive felony-murder laws.
The report also recommends changes to how accomplices are treated, noting they often bear a lesser degree of culpability, and to how young people are handled, given their limited understanding of the consequences of their actions. At a minimum, the authors argue, legislatures should narrow accomplice liability to major participants in the underlying felony who acted with reckless disregard for human life in the killing. In a similar vein, they urge enacting meaningful intent standards for a killing to qualify as felony murder, evaluating the defendant’s mental state with respect to the killing itself, not merely the underlying felony.
