[scarmig]

In California, attacking someone with a knife, solicitation of murder, and shooting a gun at someone in their car are all nonviolent felonies.

I'm happy--indeed eager--to have all of these (correctly) classified as violent felonies. But there's simply the matter of public opinion and how much space in state prisons there is. If we hold prison capacity constant, increasing the severity of punishment of one crime necessarily decreases the severity of punishment of other crimes.

[defrost]

The US has a lot of people in prison for "Felony Murder" .. being loosely connected to a crime in which someone dies.

This isn't even a crime in many other countries, the UK, Australia, for example.

Those countries charge people for their actions, not the actions of others.

In the US you have people on long sentences for Felony Murder because as teenagers they and friends broke into a house to rob it, and had one of the group shot by police, home owners, security.

Instead of a year or two for robbery, or even a parole sentence and hefty fine for being young and damn and trying doors they end up with fifty year or life sentences due to other people killing one of their friends.

There's one (of many) area that could be cleaned out to make room for the actually intentionally violent.

[nasmorn]

So if my importing a restricted exotic animal (felony under the Lacey act) leads to someone’s death (TSA agent shooting my mom who becomes hysterical as she sees the snake in my suitcase) I could go to prison for life?

[defrost]

Conceivably.

From what I read of the uneven application of that which is termed "justice" in the US I imagine it to be possible that a career hungry prosecutor roped in to cover up a potential scandal might see an opportunity to threaten you with a Felony Murder charge and force you into a plea deal should you happened to be, let's say, somewhat less than of pearly unshaded WASP white heritage and lack connections.