Homicide: Murder and Manslaughter: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Criminal Law Topic 5, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The unlawful killing of another human being, graded by the culpability of the killer into murder, manslaughter, and in the Model Penal Code negligent homicide.
Malice aforethought
The common law umbrella for the mental states supporting murder: intent to kill, intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, extreme indifference to human life, and intent to commit a felony.
Intent to kill murder
Murder established by a purpose to cause death or knowledge that death is practically certain, often inferred from the use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of the body.
Deadly weapon rule
An evidentiary inference permitting the factfinder to find intent to kill from the intentional use of an instrument likely to cause death against a vital area.
Grievous bodily harm murder
Common law murder resting on an intent to cause serious bodily injury, where death results even though the defendant never desired or foresaw the fatal outcome.
Depraved heart murder
Murder based on extreme recklessness manifesting indifference to the value of human life, such as firing into an occupied building or abandoning an infant in the cold.
Extreme indifference under the Code
The Model Penal Code raises reckless killing to murder when the recklessness manifests extreme indifference to the value of human life, a question left largely to the jury.
First degree murder
In statutes following the Pennsylvania pattern, murder committed willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, or during an enumerated dangerous felony.
Premeditation and deliberation
Premeditation requires prior thought about the killing and deliberation a cool measured weighing of the decision, though many courts require only a moment of reflection.
Commonwealth v. Carroll
Pennsylvania affirmed first degree murder despite psychiatric evidence of an impulsive shooting, holding that no appreciable time is required to premeditate.
State v. Guthrie
West Virginia required evidence of thought and consideration before the killing, rejecting instructions that let any instantaneous intent count as premeditation.
Midgett v. State
A father's fatal abuse of his son was reduced from first degree murder because the record showed rage and sustained brutality rather than a premeditated plan to kill.
Voluntary manslaughter
An intentional killing mitigated from murder because it was committed in a sudden heat of passion arising from legally adequate provocation before a reasonable cooling period.
Adequate provocation
Common law categories such as mutual combat, serious battery, or discovery of a spouse in adultery, later broadened by some courts to any circumstance apt to inflame a reasonable person.
Cooling off period
The mitigation fails if enough time passed between the provocation and the killing for a reasonable person to regain self-control, though rekindling doctrines soften the rule.
Girouard v. State
Maryland held that words alone, however insulting, are not adequate provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter.
Maher v. People
Michigan let the jury decide whether the provocation would inflame a reasonable person, loosening the rigid common law categories.
Extreme emotional disturbance
The Model Penal Code mitigation replacing provocation, available for a homicide committed under a disturbance for which there is a reasonable explanation judged from the actor's viewpoint.
People v. Casassa
New York applied the emotional disturbance mitigation but held that the explanation for the defendant's obsessive reaction was peculiar to him and therefore not reasonable.
Involuntary manslaughter
An unintentional killing caused by criminal negligence or recklessness, or in many states by an unlawful act not amounting to a felony.
Commonwealth v. Welansky
A nightclub owner was convicted of manslaughter for wanton disregard of fire safety, showing that grave omissions creating obvious risk can support liability.
State v. Williams
Parents were convicted of negligent homicide for failing to obtain medical care for their infant, applying an ordinary negligence standard under the statute then in force.
Felony murder rule
A death caused during the commission or attempted commission of a felony is murder, dispensing with proof of any mental state as to the death itself.
Merger limitation
Felony murder cannot rest on a felony whose only purpose is the assault that caused death, since the predicate must be independent of the killing.
Agency theory of felony murder
The majority rule limiting felony murder to killings by a felon or an accomplice, so deaths caused by resisting victims or police fall outside the rule.