According to the felony murder rule, when an offender in the process of committing a felony, either accidentally or intentionally, kills a victim, the judge could charge him or her with homicide. The critical purpose of this rule is to avert criminals from being violent when they commit felonies. The felony murder rule should make felons more conscious of the adverse effects of crimes that they engage in and reduce the number of felonies. For example, the sentence for bank robbery is less severe than the sentence for homicide. However, a criminal might unintentionally kill a cashier or visitor of this bank and be charged with murder afterward. It is expected that the risks of being accused of murder are too high for some people, and this will encourage them not to commit a crime at all.
The felony murder rule applies only to inherently dangerous felonies. Some scholars, such as Seibold (2017), treat the limitation of the felony murder rule to the inherently dangerous felonies as its significant downside. The reason for the limitation is that these crimes are so dangerous that the rule attempts to deter criminals from initiating them. Even if the death of a victim was caused not by an offender himself, he still might be accused of the death that occurred in the process of committing a crime. Therefore, as it has been already noted, the rule makes individuals who plan to commit an inherently dangerous felony of its potentially lethal consequences and the punishment for these consequences.
In some cases, the application of this rule is unfair. For instance, two unarmed adolescents with no criminal records enter a house that they thought is abandoned. However, even though the house looks deserted, it is not, and its owner believes that these teenagers are armed and want to rob him. The owner shoots the boys, kills one of them, and injures another. The owner will not be charged with the murder because he defended his property and his life. However, according to the felony murder rule, the injured “robber” will be accused of his friends death because he died in the process of committing an inherently dangerous felony.
References
Seibold, J. H. (2017). The Felony-Murder Rule: In Search of a Viable Doctrine. The Catholic Lawyer, 23(2), 133-162.