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Someone mentioned the airport bomb and foreseeability. This isn't the same. The legislature in (I think) all states have decided that if you commit a felony, you are on the hook for any deaths resulting during that felony. The legislature has dictated that the commission of a felony is so dangerous that any deaths ensuing from it are per se foreseeable.
Also, there is no mens rea component to the felony murder rule, so your intent or "guilty mind" is not a question. In fact, the felony murder rule is often argued to be unfair. It is the single instance in the law where you can skip manslaughter, skip murder 2, and go straight to murder 1, a capital offense, and get the death penalty without ever having premeditated or intended to harm anyone.
In fact, if you're holding up a liquor store with your buddy, and HE shoots the clerk, you can get (and some have gotten) the murder 1 death penalty. In fact, if the store clerk shoots your cohort you are liable for THAT killing (ANY killing during your commission of a crime) and can get the death penalty. Get this one: you're driving back from a Phish show with your friends, you've got a hit of acid in your wallet (a felony) and you wreck and kill one of those friends. I've never seen this instance, but felony murder might apply.
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Be careful about what you say about "all states", in New York felony murder is only a capital offense if the murder was intentional. In addition, it is only a crime if it was commited durring a violent felony[1].
Here are the relavent parts of the New York Penal Law.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/bclc/we...yfelonymur.htm
New yorks felony murder prevents the "In fact, if you're holding up a liquor store with your buddy, and HE shoots the clerk, you can get (and some have gotten) the murder 1 death penalty." In New York this is only the case if you knew that your cohort was armed, and you can prove that you wern't armed. If you bring weapons into a crime then as a thinking person you have to realize that there is a chance someone could be killed (and IMHO you deserve the murder 2 charge, you'll note that this isn't a capital offense in NYS).
It prevents the "In fact, if the store clerk shoots your cohort you are liable for THAT killing (ANY killing during your commission of a crime) and can get the death penalty." issue as murder as a participant in the crime can not be a victim of felony murder.
"Get this one: you're driving back from a Phish show with your friends, you've got a hit of acid in your wallet (a felony) and you wreck and kill one of those friends. I've never seen this instance, but felony murder might apply". Again, New York only applies to violent felonies[1] and requires that the act be commited "in the course of and in furtherance of" the crime. Running someone over with a car would probably not count as a "furtherance of" the drug posession felony.
[1]robbery, burglary, kidnapping, arson, rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, sexual abuse in the first degree, aggravated sexual abuse, escape in the first degree, or escape in the second degree. (I think thats all)