Title kinda says it all.
If I walked into a public space and started shooting with an intent to kill as many people as I could can I be charged with the attempted murder of hundreds who were there or only the (relatively) few people I managed to point a gun at?
To be perfectly clear…I do not own a gun or have any intention of trying the above.
IANAL, but it seems to me that you actually have to try to kill someone to be guilty of attempted murder, just as you have to actually kill someone to be guilty of murder.
The obvious proof of “attempt” is to injure the person with a method that could easily have been lethal - stab wound near a lethal area, gunshot wound etc.
Some people IIRC have been charged with attempted murder for trying to run down a person with their car, but the person managed to get out of the way. It’s certainly a justification in a number of police shootings.
So I’m going to guess - just being in the area is not enough. But if the perp points the gun close towards you and pulls the trigger, that’s an attempt even if he’s a lousy shot and missed. But just being in the same area is not enough. Being nearby as he walked from one gunshot victim to shoot the next one, but he didn’t point at you, that’s not enough. The actual act of trying to kill you personally has to be there.
Probably the latter.
Attempt requires a “specific intent.” That means the person has to specifically intend for the result to happen. It can’t be based on recklessness – even extreme recklessness.
So shooting into a crowd, if you missed everyone, you could, perhaps, be charged with attempting to kill those you pointed the gun at. If you hit someone, but did not kill them, you could be charged with attempting to kill them.
However, if you planned to kill specific people, you could be charged with attempted murder before firing a single shot. For example, a person is fired from their job, loads up a bunch of weapons, breaks into their former workplace at night and lies in wait in their former boss’s office. Also, they have a list of the boss and 3 other people with the title “people to kill.” They fall asleep while waiting and are arrested after being discovered in the morning.
Under at least some jurisdictions’ laws, the person could be charged with 4 counts of attempted murder, because they had the specific intent to kill those people, and had taken a substantial step toward doing so. Note that, without the list or some statement by the person before or after, it would be hard to prove anything other than an attempt to kill the former boss.
As mentioned, there needs to be a specific intent to kill a person, and a substantial step toward it, such as lying in wait. The step could also be breaking into the house of the person, or hiring a hit man. So it can be less than actually trying and failing to kill someone.
You are referring to a “unit of prosecution” argument which is debated in cases across the country especially in drug contexts. Some courts are lenient while some are strict. Arguments could be made that you could be charged with a number of counts of attempted murder based on: 1) how many bullets you fired, 2) how many bullets you had, 3) how many people were there, etc. It would be very fact specific and depend on jurisdiction.
well “conspiracy to murder” is often charged with “attempted murder” when multiple people are involved. They find it difficult to decide where the line is themselves.
But the idea is that the agent acting alone could write a fictional murder plan down, or even start doing stuff that was unusual but for this plan. Like, 1. Buy a gun, 2. attend Dealy Plaza and scope it out.
3. on the day, shoot
1 and 2 is not attempted murder. Even loading the gun and getting target in the scope, in the cross hairs is not attempted murder.
Its the actual shooting on the day that is attempted murder (if the target didnt die )…
there will be definitions. A bit of a recipe… such as unusual actions that could have, would have, should have caused death, but for stuff. randomness, accidents, inaccuracy or others interference.
The conspiracy charge would need tangible and strong evidence as to intent, not just the look of trying to murder. They might have been just seeing if the scope was good.
I’m not sure if this directly relates to your question, but it seems maybe a somewhat related concept.
If you deliberately aim a gun at person X, miss and unintentionally kill person Y, I believe that would be attempted murder of X, a felony; and consequently felony murder of Y, since the death of Y occurred during your commission of a felony.
But I can’t make any intuitive sense of what “felony attempted murder” would mean, I’m pretty sure that concept does not exist.
IANAL.
Let’s assume there’s a crowd of hundreds of people, you are a terrorist trying to create mayhem by killing anyone, not trying to kill any specific person. You fired 20 rounds in the direction of the crowd, and by sheer fluke missed everyone. Surely the prosecution does not have to figure out exactly who the bullets came closest to. What might be relevant is the “unit of prosecution” notion that @UltraVires mentions, i.e. the 20 bullets etc, not exactly where you were pointing the gun.
That’s not felony murder, that’s just murder. Intent follows the bullet, as the saying goes. Transferred intent.
I don’t think it can exist. The whole point of felony murder is it doesn’t require intent (at least as far as the death goes). But an attempt to do a thing requires intent to do the thing.
Ah, my mistake. So felony murder is an broadening of the earlier concept of transferred intent?
I disagree with this. That would be an attempt in any jurisdiction.
Many unrelated concepts are being brought up. Like conspiracy. It is a completely different concept than attempt. A conspiracy is an agreement between two people to commit a crime and (in most jurisdictions) an “overt act” to illustrate the agreement. Generally an attempt is having the specific intent to commit a crime and taking a “substantial step” towards its commission. “Mere preparation” is not enough.
If that seems vague to you, then you are in the same position as judges and juries when they are in the position of deciding. Prosecutors do not have that problem because everything to them is criminal. 
Felony murder doesn’t require intent. Felony murder means that a death occurs during the commission of (usually only certain enumerated) a felony. So if I rob a bank and the teller has a heart attack from the stress and dies, I am guilty of felony murder, even though I didn’t intend to kill the teller…
That’s why “attempted felony murder” would be a contradiction in terms. By definition a felony murder is unintentional. One cannot attempt to do something one did not intend to do.
Yes. In fact, if you and a buddy robbed a liquor store with toy cap guns, and the cashier pulled out a real gun and shot your buddy, you could go down for felony murder.
Which is why it’s unconstitutional in Canada. The SCC has held that the crime of murder must have either an intent to kill, or actions with an objectively foreseeable likelihood that death will result.
I can’t find it, but in law school we studied an attempt with a case with the following facts:
A guy is home drinking after his wife has left him. She is at work. He tells his neighbor that he is going to kill her. He gets his gun and stops off and gets a bunch of booze to get up the nerve. He drives to her place of work planning on killing her when she leaves. He sits in his truck drinking and waiting for her to come out. Fortunately or unfortunately for our guy, he drinks so much he passes out. The neighbor later decided to call the police who found him passed out drunk in his truck outside his estranged wife’s workplace.
I think it was an Indiana case, but the trial court sustained the conviction, the intermediate court reversed with dissents, and the state supreme court reversed the intermediate appeals court with dissents. That is one of the best cases when reading about the law of attempt, but I’ll be damned if I can find it.
I would disagree. It would still be necessary to show that there was an intent to pull the trigger and kill the person.
In many states, the death of a co-felon does not implicate the felony murder rule. In other states, this is true.
The rationale behind the felony murder rule is that the commission of (at least some) felonies is so dangerous that it is objectively reasonably foreseeable that a death could occur such that one could infer an intent to kill. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I do realize that most common law jurisdictions have gotten rid of the felony murder rule.
Intent can be inferred from actions. I suppose in a law school hypo you could come up with a reason why a person was pointing a rifle at someone and getting them sighted in the scope and did not have an intent to kill the person, but I would be impressed if you could convince a jury of that in the mine run of cases.
[Family huddle] We’re going to go with…Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter [/Family huddle]
[Clapping] Good answer! Good answer! [/Clapping]
Fair enough. 
Still, intent is an element which the Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
In what jurisdiction?
This seems like enough in most jurisdictions.
This would be intentional murder of Y under the transferred intent theory. I believe this is common in common law jurisdictions, but there may be exceptions.
Also, felony murder laws vary an enormous amount, but, as others have said, they are all incompatible with attempt.
Could the intent not be inferred from those circumstances? I mean, sure, the defendant could say, “I was just testing the scope,” but is there enough there that a jury could disbelieve the defendant and conclude that the defendant did have the intent to pull the trigger? I think it would be enough in my jurisdiction.