Homicide

Question 1

Assisted Suicide

Answer 1

Providing a person with the means by which that person can commit suicide generally does not make the provider guilty of murder as an accomplice but instead guilty of a lesser crime, such as assisting a suicide. Additionally, Consent is not a defense to homicide, so a “mercy killing” (i.e., euthanasia) can be a criminal homicide even if the person was willing to die because of a painful terminal illness.

Question 2

Heat of Passion

Answer 2

Voluntary manslaughter is homicide committed with malice aforethought, but also with mitigating circumstances (e.g., the “heat of passion”). A defendant acts in the heat of passion if he was provoked by a situation that could inflame the passion of a reasonable person to the extent that it could cause that person to momentarily act out of passion rather than reason.

Question 3

Involuntary Manslaughter

Answer 3

Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional homicide committed with criminal negligence

Question 4

Depraved Heart Murder

Answer 4

Murder requires that the defendant act with malice in causing the death of another human being. One of the ways in which malice can be established is through proof of a reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (i.e., a depraved-heart murder)

Question 5

Felony Murder and co-felons liability

Answer 5

Felony murder is an unintended killing proximately caused by and during the commission or attempted commission of an inherently dangerous felony, including a robbery. If one of two co-felons kills the other during the commission or attempted commission of a dangerous felony, this will also constitute felony murder. However, if a co-felon is killed by a victim or a police officer during the commission of an inherently dangerous felony, the defendant is generally not guilty of felony murder.

Question 6

Causation

Answer 6

To prove a homicide, the prosecution must show that the defendant was the actual and proximate cause of the victim’s death. If the victim would not have died but for the defendant’s act, then the defendant’s act is the actual cause of the killing. To prove proximate cause, the death must be foreseeable. A defendant’s conduct is deemed to be foreseeable if death is the natural and probable result of the conduct. Actions by a third party (e.g., negligence by the doctor treating the victim) are generally foreseeable.

Question 7

Agency rule and defendants status if cop kills a bystander

Answer 7

Under the agency theory of felony murder, a felon is not liable for the death of a bystander caused by a police officer, because the officer is not the felon’s agent. In this case, the death of a bystander does not fall within the felony murder rule because the officer is not an agent of the perpetrator of the felony.

Question 8

Homicide resulting from malum prohibitum

Answer 8

Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional homicide committed with criminal negligence or during an unlawful act. Malum prohibitum refers to wrongs that are merely prohibited (i.e., not inherently immoral or hurtful, but wrong because of a statute), such as a parking violation, smuggling, or failure to obtain a license. A homicide resulting from a wrong that is malum prohibitum will constitute involuntary manslaughter only if the unlawful act was willful or constituted criminal negligence