It’s kind of a gray area. If you do something that kills someone and a reasonable person could not have foreseen the possibility of the death, then it’s just an accident. They don’t need a term for it because you won’t be prosecuted. This would be like if you gave someone a banana and they ate it and died and neither of you knew that they had a banana allergy.
Manslaughter is when you could have reasonably foreseen the death before you did the thing that caused the death. This would be like driving too fast on a wet road losing control and killing your passenger.
Third degree homicide is a step beyond that. You are doing something that you know is stupid at this point. This would be like driving with a blindfold on and crashing and killing your passenger.
Second degree is when you know that what you’re doing is very likely to kill someone. This would be like shooting a gun down a crowded street, aiming at a tree, but hitting a person and killing them instead.
First is when you kill somebody and you meant to kill them. Obvious.
All the examples I gave could arguably be in an adjacent category depending on the exact facts. It all has to do with the mental state of the person who is doing the dangerous thing. What did they mean to do? Could they have reasonably foreseen that what they are doing could result in a death? Factors like intoxication, mental illness, and emotional disturbance all affect a person’s mental state. There is nuance to that as well. If you know you become violent when you get drunk then you are less likely to successfully convince a jury that you didn’t know what you were doing. Some people get drunk or high to give themselves the nerve to commit a crime.
What I’ve described is the law school crash course version. (I was a public defender for 4 years)
What you described is the common lay person version.
I don’t like using the premeditation language because premeditation can be less than a second. The lay understanding is that premeditation needs to be actual planning, like a heist. That is not the case.
So first and second degree are better separated through analyzing how much intentionality there was in the murder. Mens Rea, or mental state, is an important concept in criminal law.
You are correct that third degree can be intent to harm but went too far and actually killed the person. I never saw that version of third degree because it’s nearly impossible to prove that you only meant to batter/assault someone when they are dead because you beat them. Of course you give the jury the option for it, but most people will just think you meant to kill them.
Manslaughter is more than a mere accident. It’s a reasonably foreseeable accident. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but it is nuanced. If you slip and fall into a person and they fall in front of a train and get splattered, that’s probably not manslaughter. If you playfully push a person and they slip and fall out a window to their death, that’s pretty likely to be manslaughter, maybe more.
As a disclaimer these things do vary by state and country. I’m just explaining some things that are typical of these categories.
It’s kind of a gray area. If you do something that kills someone and a reasonable person could not have foreseen the possibility of the death, then it’s just an accident. They don’t need a term for it because you won’t be prosecuted. This would be like if you gave someone a banana and they ate it and died and neither of you knew that they had a banana allergy.
Manslaughter is when you could have reasonably foreseen the death before you did the thing that caused the death. This would be like driving too fast on a wet road losing control and killing your passenger.
Third degree homicide is a step beyond that. You are doing something that you know is stupid at this point. This would be like driving with a blindfold on and crashing and killing your passenger.
Second degree is when you know that what you’re doing is very likely to kill someone. This would be like shooting a gun down a crowded street, aiming at a tree, but hitting a person and killing them instead.
First is when you kill somebody and you meant to kill them. Obvious.
All the examples I gave could arguably be in an adjacent category depending on the exact facts. It all has to do with the mental state of the person who is doing the dangerous thing. What did they mean to do? Could they have reasonably foreseen that what they are doing could result in a death? Factors like intoxication, mental illness, and emotional disturbance all affect a person’s mental state. There is nuance to that as well. If you know you become violent when you get drunk then you are less likely to successfully convince a jury that you didn’t know what you were doing. Some people get drunk or high to give themselves the nerve to commit a crime.
This was amazingly descriptive, easy to understand, and nuanced. Thank you for the time you took to write this 🙂
I’ve understood it as:
First degree murder is intended and premeditated.
Second degree murder is intended but not planned ahead.
Third degree murder is when harm was intended but not death.
Manslaughter is an accident but one you should have known better and avoided.
Not that I’m disagreeing that those standards could be applied in accidental cases depending on the stupidity and predictability of the accident.
Sorry you got downvoted, this is valid.
What I’ve described is the law school crash course version. (I was a public defender for 4 years)
What you described is the common lay person version.
I don’t like using the premeditation language because premeditation can be less than a second. The lay understanding is that premeditation needs to be actual planning, like a heist. That is not the case.
So first and second degree are better separated through analyzing how much intentionality there was in the murder. Mens Rea, or mental state, is an important concept in criminal law.
You are correct that third degree can be intent to harm but went too far and actually killed the person. I never saw that version of third degree because it’s nearly impossible to prove that you only meant to batter/assault someone when they are dead because you beat them. Of course you give the jury the option for it, but most people will just think you meant to kill them.
Manslaughter is more than a mere accident. It’s a reasonably foreseeable accident. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but it is nuanced. If you slip and fall into a person and they fall in front of a train and get splattered, that’s probably not manslaughter. If you playfully push a person and they slip and fall out a window to their death, that’s pretty likely to be manslaughter, maybe more.
As a disclaimer these things do vary by state and country. I’m just explaining some things that are typical of these categories.