Homicide Flashcards
Define murder.
Murder is an unlawful killing of a human being with malice afterthought.
What is malice afterthought?
If there are no facts reducing the killing to voluntary manslaughter or excusing it and it was committed with the following states of mind:
a. Intent to kill
b. Intent to inflict great bodily injury
c. Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life
d. Intent to commit a felony
Name the statutory modifications to the common law classifications of murder.
a. First-degree murder i.e., deliberate and premeditated. The homicide of a police officer is a first-degree murder.
b. First-degree felony murder i.e., a killing committed during the commission of a BARRK (burglary, arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping) felony.
c. Second-degree murder: Depraved heart murder or any other murder not qualifying as a first-degree murder.
What are the limitations to the felony murder rule?
a. A defense that negates the underlying felony negates the felony murder. The defendant must have committed or attempted to commit the underlying felony.
b. Felony must be distinct from murder.
c. Death must have been caused before the defendant’s immediate flight from the felony ended.
d. Defendant is not liable for felony murder when a co-felon is killed as a result of the resistance from the felony victim or the police.
What is the proximate cause theory of a felony murder?
Felons are liable for the death of innocent victims caused by someone other than a co-felon. This is a minority rule.
What is the agency theory of a felony murder?
The killing must be committed by the felon or their agent with limited exceptions in cases in which the victim was used as a shield or otherwise forced by the felon to occupy a dangerous place.
What is voluntary manslaughter?
Involuntary manslaughter is a killing that would have been murder but for the existence of adequate provocation.
When is provocation adequate?
- If it would arouse sudden and intense passion in the mind of an ordinary person causing them to lose self-control.
- The defendant was in fact provoked.
- No sufficient time to cool off.
- The defendant did not cool off.
What is the theory of imperfect self-defense?
Some states recognize an imperfect self-defense doctrine where the degree of the murder may be reduced to voluntary manslaughter even though the defendant was at fault in starting the altercation or the defendant unreasonably but honestly believed in the necessity of responding by deadly force.
What is involuntary manslaughter?
A killing is involuntary manslaughter if it was committed with criminal negligence or in some states, during the commission of an unlawful act.
Tell me the rules of causation in a homicide crime.
The defendant’s conduct must be both the cause-in-fact (BUT FOR) and the proximate cause (NATURAL AND PROBABLE CONSEQUENCE) of the victim’s death.
What can be considered causation?
An act that hastens an inevitable result. Simultaneous acts of two or more persons may be independently sufficient causes of a single result.
A victim’s pre-existing fragility or weakness ___________
even if unforeseeable, does not break the chain of causation.
Limitations to homicide crime?
An intervening acta shields the defendant from liability if the act is a coincidence or is outside the foreseeable sphere of risk created by the defendant.
