ADMJ 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Policy Debate, Homicide, Mens Rea
22 Dec 2020
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Document Summary
Felony-murder is one of four traditional branches on the tree of murder, yet clearly the odd one out. It permits severe punishment for the most heinous of offenses in some cases that can appropriately be described as accidents. Classic form: a felony + a killing = murder. Abandoned by england, felony-murder has found a niche in america. At common law, all felonies were punishable by death, so it made little difference if the perp was convicted of murder or of the underlying felony b/c the sanction was the same. The primary use of f-m rule at common law then was to deal w/a homicide that occurred in the furtherance of an attempted felony that failed. The homicide, as distinct from the underlying felony was thus an offense of strict liability. It was hard to claim that the doctrine worked injustice in an age that recognized only a few felonies and that punished each as a capital offense.
