Felonies

The term felony, in some common law countries, means a serious crime. The word originates from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie"), where felonies were originally crimes that involved 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 a crime of high seriousness, while a misdemeanor is not.

A person who has committed a felony is a felon, and upon conviction of a felony in a court of law is known as a convicted felon or a convict. 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. Note that the actual prison sentence handed out has no effect on this; the decision is based on the maximum sentence possible under law. For example, if a person is sentenced to six months, but the charge can be "up to two years", it counts as a felony, in spite of the actual time served being well under a year. Individual states may differ in this definition, using other categories as seriousness or context.

Similar to felonies in some civil law countries (Italy, Spain) are delicts, whereas in others (France, Belgium, Switzerland) crimes (more serious) and delicts (délits, less serious); and still in others (Brazil, Portugal), crimes and delicts are synonymous (more serious), as opposed to contraventions (less serious).

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