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charged with Felony in Rhode Island?
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Rhode Island Felony:
- (O.Eng.Law) An offense which occasions a total forfeiture either lands or
goods, or both, at the common law, and to which capital or other punishment may
be added, according to the degree of guilt.
A heinous crime;
especially, a crime punishable by death or imprisonment.
Note: Forfeiture
for crime having been generally abolished in the United States, the term felony,
in American law, has lost this point of distinction; and its meaning, where not
fixed by statute, is somewhat vague and undefined; generally, however, it is
used to denote an offense of a high grade, punishable either capitally or by a
term of imprisonment. In Massachusetts, by statute, any crime punishable by
death or imprisonment in the state prison, and no other, is a felony; so in New
York. the tendency now is to obliterate the distinction between felonies and
misdemeanors; and this has been done partially in England, and completely in
some of the States of the Union. The distinction is purely arbitrary, and its
entire abolition is only a question of time.
Note: There is no lawyer who
would undertake to tell what a felony is, otherwise than by enumerating the
various kinds of offenses which are so called. originally, the word felony had a
meaning: it denoted all offenses the penalty of which included forfeiture of
goods; but subsequent acts of Parliament have declared various offenses to be
felonies, without enjoining that penalty, and have taken away the penalty from
others, which continue, nevertheless, to be called felonies, insomuch that the
acts so called have now no property whatever in common, save that of being
unlawful and purnishable. --J. S. Mill.
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Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc. |
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