That goes to the OP and I agree.
If I am the Las Vegas shooter and just aiming into a crowd I am only in trouble for the people I hit? I was not aiming at any one person. I wanted to hit as many as possible. I was not attempting to kill anyone specific. It was indiscriminate. I wanted to kill as many people as I could, regardless of who they are.
I’m not saying that you are firing into a group of people, and claiming a lack of intent to kill any one person in the group. That would be a case where you don’t get to credibly claim a lack of intent to kill.
I’m referring to blindly firing into a room, and then finding out that you shot a bunch of people. If it helps better, imagine a person getting blindfolded and then walking down the street firing a gun. Point being, nobody was in their aim, but somebody gets hit. Even lacking some credible basis to say that you had no intent to shoot them, you still face a murder charge.
But specific intent does require that you identify some specific person you intend to kill (even if you miss and kill somebody else), which is necessary for a 1st degree murder conviction. A general premeditation to do harm or wreak havoc isn’t sufficient.
There are other charges that can be filed, so it’s not like the shooter is “only in trouble for the people he hits”.
But if a sniper shoots me as I stand next to you, it doesn’t make sense that he committed murder against me and attempted murder of you. He didn’t attempt to kill you when he shot me.
But assault is a threat to do imminent violence. And aggravated assault is doing that with a deadly weapon. The sniper did that against everybody who was a victim.
How do we know he didn’t? I think he could be charged because he shot Connelly, and you could draw an inference that he intended to kill him, but missed and only wounded him. Maybe he could have convinced a jury that he only intended to kill Kennedy, and then we’d have an interesting question about whether there can be transferred intent in those circumstances.
In some jurisdictions. In some it is equivalent to murder with malice aforethought. It’s called depraved indifference to the value of human life, or the more poetical, depraved-heart murder. The most poetical is that it is the product of an “abandoned and malignant heart.” ETA: I took a long time finishing this reply. I see this has been clarified. But I leave it in because of “abandoned and malignant heart.”
And then what happened? If they kill you, it’s first-degree murder. If they pull the trigger and miss, it’s attempted murder. If you say no, and they leave without the money, it’s attempted armed robbery, but they clearly didn’t intend to kill you. If they are apprehended while still pointing the gun, it may or may not be enough for attempted murder. Because of those other possible outcomes, it’s hard to say that the outcome the person wanted to happen was your death. By their words, what they want to happen is you giving them money and them leaving without killing you.
Then why is felony murder a thing?
If the getaway driver can be charged with murder…full on murder…when he never had a gun, never shot anyone, had no intent, was a mile away from the murder, what is the rationale? Yet, you can point a gun at someone and threaten them and that is not even attempted murder?
Just seems a disconnect to me.
FWIW I really do think I get what you are on about. Attempted murder needs to be an real attempt at killing someone. I just find the law uneven here.
Which is why most common law jurisdictions have abolished it.
“It” being felony murder or attempted murder?
Felony murder.
Yeah, felony murder is a different kind of substitute for malice aforethought.
A professor described it as the “keep our felonies safe” rule. I don’t claim that it makes sense. I’m just explaining what I know about it. And the actual rules for the felony murder rule vary enormously among the states. In addition, although a state can impose the death penalty for a felony murder conviction, the defendant in such a case has to have personally and intentionally killed the victim. So, the state has to prove intentional murder to use a rule that is a substitute for intent.
Isn’t that basically the scenario of what happened with Alec Baldwin and the Rust movie shooting?
I think Baldwin did a quick draw and the weapon discharged. He was (supposedly) told the weapon was safe before he used it. Of course, this is all before trial speculation.
There is a very long thread in the Café Society part of the SDMB on this if you are interested:
It seems to me the robbery scenario makes sense as NOT attempted murder. The perp may or may not shoot. The logical, anticipated outcome, is that a threatened person will comply and hand over the money. In that case, the perp has no intent to shoot or kill. Things may get messed up, the victim may fight back, whatever - but they did not, so no shots were fired - and that was the robber’s intent.
OTOH, if someone lines up a target in a scope, but then changes their mind, packs up and leaves of their own accord - in the end, their intent and action was not to commit murder, no matter what they might hav planned up to that point. (Of course, if they’d planned it with someone else, conspiracy still applies).
If the person is interrupted, the gun grabbed, before they can fire a shot, they have not demonstrated the intent to not fire. I guess the question becomes, since they were all set to fire, gun pointed and sighted, is that intent beyond a reasonable doubt? However, their actions indicated some sort of intent, I suppose the defense would have to point to something, some evidence, to indicate a possible (reasonable doubt) reason why they would not follow through had they not been interrupted.
I suppose it’s like arresting the perp carrying a bomb on his way to the target he’s told others he’s planning to bomb. It’s hard to reasonably doubt at that point that he would not have planted it.
So is it murder if you try rob an elderly man brandishing a firearm and he get so scared he drops dead of a heart attack?
And that if that is 'murder" is it “attempted murder” if he has a heart attack and survives it?
Is it murder if you pull a prank on Bob and he dies of a heart attack?
Is it murder if you chase someone (intending to beat them, or they think you do) and they run into traffic?
I assume part of the issue is the foreseeability of death. Did you know they had a weak heart? Were you intending to harm them short of death?
Seems to me there’s a category of death by misadventure which might be manslaughter. The classic case IIRC is the person who is punched and hits their head on a sharp object on the way down and dies. Death was not the intention, but you are nevertheless the architect of their demise. (IANAL)
A relevant legal principle:
Depends on your jurisdiction. Most likely some kind of manslaughter, might be felony murder. If all you did is brandish, that’s probably it. You acted with recklessness toward someone under circumstances where doing so might kill them, and it did kill them.
Relevant to this thread, it isn’t intentional murder, which means it also isn’t attempted anything if he survives. An attempt is a thing that you intend to do. You didn’t attempt to kill him, even though his death was a reasonably foreseeable outcome of the attack. If you pull the trigger and miss, that’s an attempted murder. If you pull the trigger and miss and he has a heart attack and dies, that’s murder, because you intended to kill him, tried to do it, and succeeded, albeit weirdly.
Not unless the prank is beating the hell out of him, shooting him, running him over with your car, or some other thing that is likely to kill him. Manslaughter of some kind if, like you said, there was a foreseeable risk of death with respect to which you acted with recklessness. Like if he’s 100 and you dressed up as the Grim Reaper and kicked his door down and started screaming at him. Maybe nothing at all, if it was a very boring prank.
Most likely the same as the robbery scenario, except without the felony murder bit. Manslaughter of some kind, probably.
As opposed to a criminal case (an important distinction I think).
As the article mentions, the basic principle extends to criminal law, including this famous case:
In criminal law, the general maxim is that the defendant must “take their victims as they find them”, as echoed in the judgment of Lord Justice Lawton in R v. Blaue (1975), in which the defendant was held responsible for killing his victim, despite his contention that her refusal of a blood transfusion constituted an intervening act.[6]
It gets more complicated in criminal law, as it can depend on what mental state is required. If you intentionally spit on someone, which in my state would be the misdemeanor of harassment, and it turns out they have a compromised immune system and they die, you could not be charged with intentional murder.
Maybe it could be manslaughter given the current state of things, if you could be considered reckless as to whether exposure to your saliva posed a substantial risk of killing the person. There’s also a misdemeanor manslaughter rule, which is like the little brother of the felony murder rule, which could possibly come into play in some jurisdictions.
But yes, if you intentionally injure a person severely enough to kill them without treatment, you can be culpable for that even if the reason they didn’t get lifesaving treatment is that they refused it. You still intentionally caused the injuries that killed the person.
IIRC, spitting on someone in some jurisdictions is a form of assault.
The eggshell principle, as I understand it, applies if you punch someone and break their skull, thus killing them with what would be a normally non-lethal assault. Same idea with compromised immune system or weak heart. Not sure how similar that is to an unforeseen(?) obstacle causing a death - such as sharp corner of a table - when the act itself is not normally lethal. it’s not that the victim himself had the shortcoming that caused his death. Or you advance menacingly and he trips backward and sustains a lethal injury? Similar to the traffic scenario…?