The post about how surviving home invaders may be charged with murder after the victim shot and killed one of them in self-defense led to comments criticizing the "felony murder" rule. To quote the Georgia statute, there are three ways to be found guilty of murder:
(a) A person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being.
(b) Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take the life of another human being which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. Malice shall be implied where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
(c) A person also commits the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony, he causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.
And people have long been troubled by the "irrespective of malice" nature of felony murder; even felons, the theory goes, should be punished just for the crimes that they intended, not for a murder that happens unintentionally and even unexpectedly during that crime.
