WASHINGTON — Felony murder laws allow people who neither killed nor intended to kill to be convicted of murder and, in dozens of states, sentenced to life without parole, according to a new report that calls for abolishing the doctrine nationwide and reconsidering sentences imposed under it.
The Sentencing Project’s report, Felony Murder: An On-Ramp for Extreme Sentencing, finds the laws remain in effect in 48 states, Washington, D.C., and the federal system, making the United States an international outlier and contributing to racial disparities, the imprisonment of young people and extreme sentences for accomplices whose roles in a crime may have been limited.
“With one in six people in U.S. prisons serving a life sentence, addressing mass incarceration requires confronting laws that continue to funnel people into some of the most extreme punishments in our legal system, including felony murder statutes,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, director of research at The Sentencing Project and a co-author of the report.
In an interview with the Vanguard, Ghandnoosh described felony murder as a form of legal liability that can transform participation in an underlying felony into a murder conviction even when the person did not cause or anticipate the killing.
“Felony murder is an offense where it sounds like murder and it sounds like it’s something worse than murder, but it’s actually this form of legal fiction that exists in almost all U.S. states, but not all, all except for Kentucky and Hawaii,” Ghandnoosh said.
Under felony murder laws, a person participating in certain felonies can be convicted of murder when someone dies during the crime. Depending on the jurisdiction, that liability can extend to an accomplice who did not personally kill anyone and may not have been present when the killing occurred.
“What felony murder says is that if you committed a serious felony and someone in your group, or often it’s someone in your group or you in the process of that felony killed somebody, even if it was unintentional, even if you didn’t intend for someone in your group to kill somebody, you will be held liable for having committed an intentional homicide,” Ghandnoosh said.
She argued that the doctrine breaks the traditional connection between a person’s culpability and the punishment imposed.
“People should be held accountable for what they’ve done,” Ghandnoosh said. “In many cases, when we’re talking about felony murder, that means people should have been held accountable for the underlying crime that they committed, especially when they didn’t know that and didn’t participate in their crime partner killing somebody in the process of that offense. They should not be held liable for murder.”
The consequences can be dramatically different. According to the report, 10 states and the federal system mandate life without parole for adult felony murder convictions, 11 states mandate it in some circumstances, and another 18 states and Washington, D.C., permit the sentence. About half of states allow the death penalty in at least some felony murder cases.
“If people were held liable just for the underlying felony, maybe they would serve 10 to 20 years for the underlying offense,” Ghandnoosh told the Vanguard. “If they’re convicted of felony murder, then they can end up having to die in prison as a result of the conviction.”
That can include defendants whose participation was geographically and functionally removed from the killing.
“They don’t have to even be there,” Ghandnoosh said. “I think the most common felony murder scenario is a group of people, often young, often men, committing a robbery.”
In such a case, she said, one participant may be a lookout while another is the getaway driver.
“They might not be anywhere close to where the robbery is happening,” Ghandnoosh said. “They might be some distance from it. And if the person that’s doing the robbery kills the victim, all of those people can be convicted of felony murder.”
The report argues that the resulting sentences do little to improve public safety. Research reviewed by its authors found felony murder laws have not significantly reduced felonies or the number of felonies resulting in death, while lengthy sentences can keep people incarcerated decades after their risk of reoffending has substantially declined.
The disparities are particularly pronounced among young people. In Pennsylvania, nearly three-quarters of people serving life without parole for felony murder in 2019 were 25 or younger when the offense occurred. In Minnesota, more than half of those charged with aiding and abetting felony murder between 2010 and 2019 were 25 or younger.
“Generally crime is a young person’s pursuit,” Ghandnoosh said. “And so by young, I mean people, not just teenagers, but also people in their early 20s.”
Research into adolescent and emerging-adult development, she said, is particularly relevant because felony murder often arises from group crimes.
“What the research is clear about is that this is a population that is especially likely to be swayed by peer pressure, is less likely to be able to understand the indirect extended consequences of their actions,” Ghandnoosh said. “And they’re more likely when they commit crime to do so in groups.”
That combination, she said, makes young people especially vulnerable to felony murder prosecution because prosecutors can extend murder liability across an entire group participating in an underlying felony.
Women also face distinctive consequences. An exploratory California survey found 72% of women serving life sentences for felony murder were not the people who committed the homicide, compared with 55% of men surveyed. The California Coalition for Women Prisoners has reported that many women convicted under the doctrine were accomplices experiencing intimate partner violence.
“A lot of times women that are serving extreme sentences, they’re doing that in part, especially for those who are convicted of felony murder,” Ghandnoosh said.
She said research has raised concerns about women participating in crimes while in abusive relationships and acting under coercion.
“If that partner ends up killing somebody, then they’re going to be held liable for felony murder,” Ghandnoosh said. “And so there’s also a lot of concern about them acting under coercion in helping a crime partner and then being liable for the worst things that they do in the course of that offense.”
The report also documents substantial racial disparities. In Pennsylvania, 80% of people imprisoned with felony murder convictions in 2020 were people of color and 70% were Black. In Cook County, Illinois, eight out of 10 people sentenced under the doctrine between 2010 and 2020 were Black.
Ghandnoosh said those disparities cannot be separated from prosecutorial discretion over whether to file felony murder charges and which participants in a group crime should face them.
“Prosecutors have a really important subjective decision to make about when to bring felony murder charges,” she said.
The decision can involve whether prosecutors view a killing as a group crime that went tragically wrong or as evidence that the participants are sufficiently dangerous to warrant permanent imprisonment.
“Race and ethnicity plays a big part in what kind of judgment prosecutors make about when that’s happened versus these are a group of bad kids and I think if I can lock them up forever, I’m going to make the community safer,” Ghandnoosh said.
“So that decision of when to invoke a charge, the felony murder charge, and how many people in that crime group to bring that charge against is very likely to be affected by racial bias.”
California has substantially narrowed felony murder liability. Under reforms enacted through Senate Bill 1437, an accomplice generally cannot be convicted under the doctrine unless the person intended to kill or was a major participant in the underlying felony who acted with reckless indifference to human life.
“I think California has come a long way, but there’s still more to do,” Ghandnoosh said.
The report notes that approximately half of California’s life-without-parole population was convicted of felony murder and that the state continues to mandate life without parole for certain felony murder convictions.
“What we recommend is across the board, getting rid of, first of all, LWOP sentences,” Ghandnoosh said. “And secondly, moving in the direction of getting rid of felony murder as a legal doctrine altogether.”
Ghandnoosh said eliminating felony murder would not prevent prosecutors from holding someone legally responsible when evidence establishes that the person intended a killing, assisted it or acted with the culpability required under other homicide statutes.
“We have enough laws on the books to hold people accountable for the underlying felony,” she said. “And if there was any malicious intent resulting related to the death, to hold them responsible for the homicide. We don’t need felony murder laws.”
The report recommends that states repeal felony murder statutes altogether. Until then, it calls for eliminating death and life-without-parole sentences for felony murder, protecting minors and emerging adults, narrowing accomplice liability, requiring meaningful proof of intent regarding the killing itself and addressing racial disparities in enforcement.
Ghandnoosh said proportionality, rather than the elimination of accountability, is central to the proposed reforms.
“Without a felony murder law, you still have homicide laws on the books,” she said, adding that those laws allow charges based on premeditation, intent or extreme recklessness depending on the circumstances.
“It’s just a question of bringing back proportionality into sentencing and making sure that people are correctly convicted of a combination of what they did and what they intended to do, and that we’re bringing the correct charge against them for that combination of facts.”
The report also emphasizes that reforms should apply retroactively. Ghandnoosh pointed to Michigan, where the state Supreme Court in 1980 imposed a culpable mental-state requirement for felony murder but only recently determined that people convicted before the ruling could benefit from that change.
“That’s how long it took for the state to create that requirement in 1980 and then now in 2026 to make that reform retroactive so that the approximately 100 people that have been in Michigan prisons before that ruling in 1980 can benefit from it,” Ghandnoosh said. “So that’s part of why I sort of emphasized how important it is to make the reform retroactive.”
She also said California has taken an important step by allowing some people initially charged with felony murder, but ultimately convicted of another offense through a plea agreement, to seek relief if their conduct would no longer support the original felony murder theory.
That distinction matters because felony murder’s impact extends beyond those whose final conviction formally carries that label.
“So many more people beyond that across the country are charged with felony murder and plead down to something else and something with a really substantial sentence because of that initial felony murder charge,” Ghandnoosh said.
“Which is just to say that the impact of this law is so much broader than when we look at the final number of how many people have that conviction that are serving these lengthy sentences.”
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