Is there such a thing?
I was reading some news (the actual news completely irrelevant) and they mentioned a charge of “involuntary manslaughter”. Would that be redundant (manslaughter is involuntary, voluntary is murder), would it be one of those situations where the commonplace term is not the one used in the law (that is, what most people would call “murder”, the law calls “voluntary manslaughter”), or would there be a legal difference between “voluntary manslaughter” and “murder”?
Wikipedia defines it thus:
So if you come home to find your wife in bed with your best friend and shoot them both…
So it’s like the French crime passionnel? I didn’t think that defense was legitimate under English-based law systems but clearly I’m wrong. According to the Wikipedia entry if you killed your wife and her lover you could claim provocation. In 1707 English Lord Chief Justice John Holt described the act of a man having sexual relations with another man’s wife as “the highest invasion of property” and claimed, in regard to the aggrieved husband, that “a man cannot receive a higher provocation”. I don’t think that would play well today.
It’s more like, if you punch a guy in the face and he falls down, hits his head and dies, it’s voluntary manslaughter. If you run a red light and kill a man, it’s involuntary manslaughter. In the first case, you attacked him but didn’t mean to kill him. In the second, you didn’t mean to hit anyone.
In CA, manslaughter lacks the malice element. With malice it’s murder 1 or 2. Manslaughter is a lesser included element in the crime of murder. If you run a red light and kill a man, it may be vehicular manslaughter, or it may simply be an accident.
The jury makes those decisions based on the evidence at trial.
And not all jurisdictions have that distinction. Canada doesn’t. There’s just one manslaughter. offence, plus murder with two different degrees. The distinction is whether there was intent to kill.
So then how would that be different than second-degree murder? Is it just different terminology in different jurisdictions?
Murder 2 requires malice. A basic antisocial act is one form of malice. Shooting at an airplane that is taking off and someone is hit and killed. No intent to kill, but the act was so evil and disregarded logic to the extent that malice is implied. Murder 2 does not (in CA) have to have any intent to kill. Manslaughter needs no intent, or any malice, but intent is tricky because there is no definite time necessary to form that intent. Seconds may be enough time to reflect and form intent.
Every homicide a not a murder. Homicide can range from justifiable to 1st degree murder, and all the steps in between.
Like running a red light.
I would say someone who intentionally ran a red light, with complete disregard to the consequences could be found malicious. On the other hand, a mother driving home from the store, with 2 screaming kids in the car, causing her attention to be momentarily diverted which resulting in her missing the signal and going through a red light would not be found to have performed a malicious act. I doubt she would be prosecuted beyond a traffic ticket.
Yes, it’s different terminology in different jurisdictions. In my jurisdiction the difference between murder 1 & 2 is #1 includes both malice and premeditation, or else “special circumstances”, #2 is just wrongfully killing someone intentionally (i.e. it’s the default murder status); meanwhile intentional manslaughter is causing a death by an assault in the heat of the moment, and negligent manslaughter is causing a death w/o intentional action but still having acted negligently. Notice that under this, even if you merely intended to just whup his ass, if you went out of your way to assault the other party at the time and place of your choosing you can still be on the hook for murder if the other guy dies.
By god, when I get home, there better be a martini in the freezer.
I doubt either of them would be meaningfully prosecuted, but they should be. Operating a motor vehicle on a public road is the most dangerous-to-others thing most people ever do. Allowing yourself to be distracted enough to completely miss a red light is a serious abrogation of social responsibility.
But in the second example, the mother’s missing the signal, her actions are not criminally negligent. They were negligent, but that negligence, I don’t feel, rises to the level of criminal negligence. The intentional red light runner, on the other hand, clearly is disregarding the safety of others on the road.
As an elaboration, that’s why fleeing from the cops results in so many serious charges. The person doesn’t run a red light or speed in an accidental or non-malicious manner, he is purposefully disregarding the safety of everyone along his path. Someone not paying attention for a second is far different than someone purposefully running a red light.
So if I’m reading this correctly, murder 2 would imply that there was intent to kill, even if it was in the heat of the moment, but voluntary manslaughter would be if you punched someone out who fell and hit his head on a rock and subsequently died. In the classic example, you come home and find a guy in bed with your wife, you get a gun and shoot him intending to kill him - that’s murder 2. But if you just punched him in the nose with no intent to kill him, but he somehow died as a result of that assault, it’s voluntary manslaughter?
No, Voluntary manslaughter has no weapon restrictions. It’s a homicide where no malice or intent to kill was present. Heat of passion is just one example. If a guy comes home, sees his wife in bed with another guy, and thereafter runs to the gun closet, unlocks it, grabs a gun, runs to the ammo locker, unlocks it, gets the ammo, loads the gun and runs back upstairs and shoots them, then it’s possible the jury would feel that enough time had elapsed that a reasonable man would have come to his senses and therefore, the act was an intentional killing. If on the other hand, he finds his wife in bed, and a gun is right there on the dresser, which he quickly grabs and starts shooting, then the jury may find he was still in the heat of passion.
The choice of weapon is only one thing that would be considered by the jury in looking at the case as a whole.
But then, I am not a law school professor so…
Answer for my jurisdiction, of course – According to the lawyer I just spoke to, yes, if you ran into them unexpectedly (so, no staking out the house to catch him coming in) and in your rage punched him in the nose, or hit him upside the head with the bedside lamp, or as **Morgenstern *said, drew the gun you normally carry on your person, right then and there *on the (wet) spot.
You deliberately snuck back to catch them, then wait for him to be walking out the door before sucker punching him, or go back to the den to fetch a baseball bat, and you’re going into murder territory.
No, the second one is vehicular homicide, not manslaughter.
Thanks guys, I knew asking here would provide much more interesting and complete information than a search 