- published: 19 Apr 2016
- views: 2432
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors. Many common law countries have now abolished the felony/misdemeanor distinction and replaced it with other distinctions such as between indictable offences and summary offences. A felony is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness", while a misdemeanor is not.
A person convicted in a court of law of a felony crime is known as a felon. In the United States, where the felony/misdemeanor distinction is still widely applied, the federal government defines a felony as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. If punishable by exactly one year or less, it is classified as a misdemeanor. The individual states may differ in this definition, using other categories as seriousness or context.
Similar to felonies in some civil law countries (Italy, etc.) are delicts, whereas in others (France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland etc.) crimes (more serious) and delicts (less serious).
Hey baby, I'm sorry for all I've done
I can't change the past, it's all gone
But I will change the future I'll try hard
Step by step and bit by bit, heart by heart
There's a light inside your eyes
I remember the first day I saw this light
I don't know why, I promised to die
I don't know why, I promised to cry
She's all alone on this way of mystery
And I hope my soul will turn to see
I can follow her to eternity - we use the flame
Well there's a girl who's sitting there
She takes my hand and tells me that she'll care
She doesn't know, the pain inside my heart
She listens where it's gone and brought it back home
She's been so kind, and in the night I fall, falling
She's been alone in this world
Tonite, tonite, tonite - The sun will rise again
Tonite, tonite, tonite - Nothing will stay the same
The thin ice I'm walking on starts to break
She's the one, I must choose which way to take
All the doubt, it lays back behind