Racially Disparate and Disproportionate Punishment of Felony Murder: Evidence from New York

America’s peculiar institution of felony murder liability has long been criticized as cruel and pointless, particularly as applied to defendants who did not kill. This study of felony murder arrest and disposition in New York reports large racial disparities, particularly for those convicted who did not kill. It is one of the first to examine the behavior punished, revealing that half of those convicted were charged as accomplices, not alleged to have killed. Many of those alleged to have caused death appeared to do so inadvertently. And almost thirty percent of all people convicted of felony murder were teens with diminished culpability. Thus, arguably, disproportionate punishment is the norm. The study also reports substantial racial disparities in arrests and convictions for felony murder, and that these were substantially higher among those convicted as accomplices. Finally, the study reveals hundreds of arrests of almost exclusively Black and Latinx people for the fictitious crime of attempted felony murder. In New York, it seems, the worst of felony murder is reserved for defendants of color.