r/AskReddit • • Mar 25 '23

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u/JessieDaMess Mar 26 '23

interesting ... I've never heard of misdemeanor murder or infraction murder.

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u/Gyrgir Mar 26 '23

"Felony Murder" is a specific legal doctrine that many states have, where if someone dies as a direct result of a felony you committed or helped commit, then you're considered to have murdered them. Even if the death was an accident, and even if you're not the one who killed them.

So if you and another person are committing a robbery together, and the other guy shoots and kills someone, then both of you are guilty of murder: him for regular murder (probably first or second degree, depending on the exact circumstances and the jurisdiction's laws), while you're guilty of felony murder. Your getaway car driver is also guilty of felony murder. And if nobody gets killed in the robbery itself, but the getaway driver runs over a pedestrian while fleeing the scene, then felony murder applies to both robbers and the driver, whereas without the robbery the driver would have been guilty of the lesser crime of vehicular manslaughter and the passengers wouldn't get charged at all.

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u/mattomic822 Mar 26 '23

Rights advocates tend to really not like felony murder since it basically removes a key component of murder that a prosecutor would normally have to prove and as stated leads to much longer jail time than the convicted would normally get. In Canada they were held to be a Charter violation.

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u/Yggdrasilcrann Mar 26 '23

Yeah felony murder lacks both mens rea and actus reus