I don’t think that the defendant in the original hypothetical can be found guilty of mutilating a corpse because he lacked the necessary intent for the offense. His intent was to commit murder, not to mutilate a corpse.
What I wanna know is, where did dey hide de file in da first place? 
Cartooniverse
To add another stupid hypothetical to help illuminate…
Suppose you take a pistol. You assume it is loaded, but it it isn’t. You walk up behind somebody, put the gun to his head, and pull the trigger. Your intent is to blow his head off. Or at least make a sizable hole. The gun isn’t loaded, so it doesn’t go off. You stand there stunned, and the guy grabs you, and the cops come and haul you off.
What are they going to charge you with, attempted scaring the pants off of? No, attempted murder. You attempted to kill the guy. That you were incompetent is not the issue. You still tried.
Similarly with the corpse. You thought he was alive, you tried to kill him. That you were incompetent to make sure he was still alive first is no defense. You didn’t succeed in killing him, so it can’t be murder. But the intent is there, and the overt act, so it is attempted murder.
Same with a mannequin. If I got put on a jury to hear an attempted murder case, and the defense was that the defendant thought he was shooting a person but was actually shooting a mannequin, I’d vote guilty in a heartbeat and sleep easy after the fact. That you think he deserves special treatment because he didn’t ensure his victim was a person makes me worry about you. Next time he might not make that same mistake. If he tried once, what makes you think there won’t be a next time?
Suppose you claimed you knew the pistol wasn’t loaded - hello freedom.
Irishman: Perhaps good real life examples are the attempted assasination attempts on then-President Gerald Ford.
J kat: You might have a very tough time proving what you did or did not know, though. And there ARE laws about brandishing a firearm, meancing with a firearm, etc. I suppose they are legal-ese for “Scaring the pants off of” as suggested above. The threatened person didn’t know the gun was loaded, and so assumed they were in mortal danger. And to complicate the scenario further, how many times has someone been fatally shot by a gun that was thought to have been unloaded? (I think we’d be talking manslaughter here.)
Okay then, for those of you who have seen fight club, when tyler durden goes into the 7/11 and grabs th clerk, if the cops had suddenly swooped down and caught him at that point, how could he prove he didn’thave an intent to murder?
Tossing in an even more absurd hypothetical for those who think that shooting a mannequin is attempted murder: what about the witch doctor who puts pins in a voodoo doll attempting to harm/ kill his victim? Attempted murder?
I think it might, too. You say you see a lifelike mannequin, you think it’s human, you shoot with intent to kill, and you’re confident that’s not attempted murder. Let me change your hypo just a tad. What if you go to kill Bob. You see Bob sitting in a chair in Bob’s house. You say “this is for stealing my skateboard, you son of a bitch!” You shoot Bob. You’re immediately arrested; it turns out the cops found out about your scheme, they’ve moved Bob to a secure location, and they dummied up a mannequin to sit in Bob’s chair. You think that’s not attempted murder?
–Cliffy
I doubt that in many jurisdictions the mutiliation of a corpse is a specific intent crime. There’s no requirement that matt had intent to mutilate a corpse, as long as he had intent to fire the gun into the body, which he did.
–Cliffy
It might depend on the jurisdiction, but in a state that required the defendant to undertake a “substantial step” this isn’t attempted murder because, even though D. thinks this is a substantial step, in reality, it isn’t.
–Cliffy
This old thread? Wow.
We had a good discussion about legal, factual, and hybrid impossibility here, back in April.
- Rick
I’m not a lawyer, let alone an american one, but I disagree with this last statement. Though indeed it’s true in the case of the already dead man, in the case of the mannequin, it doesn’t appear as clear to me. The intended victim is actually alive, so it isn’t impossible to kill him. Only the potential murderer, mislead by the mannequin, thought his victim was sitted in a chair (for instance) while actually he wasn’t .
So this situation seems exactly similar to the case of the man shooting at an empty bed. Only an impossibility of fact, not a legal impossibility, according to the jurisprudence you cited. So, the mannequin-shooter should be charged with attempted murder…
You realize that you have just unleashed the last restraints that were protecting…
My argument: You can only attempt murder if a reasonable man would believe that his actions constitute attempted murder. What lawyers mean by “reasonable man beliveing” is what philosophers would call knowing. The voodoo Dr. can’t know that he will murder, because to know something, call it A,
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A must be true
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You must believe that A is true
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Your belief must be justified.
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is not true here.
This argument makes even this scenario not attempted murder:
Inside the voodoo doll is a switch connected to a bomb that is set up near the victim. The Dr. believes that pushing the pin into the doll will kill the victim, and this is true, but the belief is not justified.
I guess the court thought like this in State v. Guffey, referenced by Gazoo: Hunter believed he would kill deer. His belief was justified. It was not a deer. Hence the non-conviction.
IMNAL and I assume Jodi is. I am not convinced with Jodi’s argument though. Here’s my reasoning :
Commiting an act not knowing that the act is a crime still holds the person liable for prosecution, because the fact is that it was a crime. With the same reasoning commiting an act knowing that it was a crime when actually it was not cannot be used to prosecute the person.
Seems logical, but according to my Crim Law professor, the trend is that this is not a two-way street. Note – law enforcement and the prosecution of crime are not meant to be “fair” to criminals; it’s not a game with teams on both sides.
–Cliffy
andy_fl, the difference between factual impossibility and legal impossibility has been discussed. Legal impossibility (committing an act that isn’t a crime) is a defense; factual impossibility (failure to complete an act that IS a crime) may be a defense for the crime itself, but it is NOT a defense against the charge of attempt. Murder IS a crime; the fact that the intended victim was already dead does not make what he attempted to do “not murder”; it makes what he did “not murder.” Attempted murder is a crime because people who try to kill are as dangerous and as deserving of punishment as people who actually do.
He can only defend against the charge of attempt by claiming that he knew the victim was dead; to do this he must take the stand and swear to it. While this creates a reasonable doubt which the prosecution must then disprove, it also strips the defendant’s Fifth Amendment protection. The same goes for the “empty gun” hypo.
Hmm…
While we’re discussing wackier and wackier hypothetical examples, what if A broke into B’s house, saw someone in bed, and shot him, but in fact B had died of a heart attack earlier and elsewhere and C was in the bed (make up your own reason).
Is it murder?
I would be interested if anyone knows of a case in the US or anywhere, along the lines of this thread. A person shots a corpse, tried for attempted murder and the verdict.
I’m trying to mentally place myself as a juror in such a case. I understand the attempted murder concept, but I don’t think I would vote guilty. It seems a legal distinction, not a practical one.
Attempting something which is impossible.
Of course; why not?