Um... You Could have just not Gone to the Wedding...

Remove all ads!

Check out this story where a woman stabs her fiance to death on their wedding day (before they got married). She says it was accidental, but it seems hard to believe you could accidently stab someone in the chest... twice.

OOOPS! My bad.... DAMNIT! I can't believe I did it again!

 

Her name is Na Cola? Her mom should be in jail for that one... LMAO

 

The "I didn't mean to kill them" defense actually worked in Rockford, Illinois about 12 years ago....

 

SEE! That is why you NEVER tell a woman she looks fat in her wedding dress .

 

To be fair, it seems that all she said is that she didn't mean to kill him, not that she didn't stab him or that she stabbed him accidentally. She seems to be firmly in denial-world at the moment, as she apparently didn't believe (or want to believe) that her fiancee was even dead at her arraignment.

Incidentally, I've also heard of 'suicides' where the victim shot himself twice or more.

 

Exactly BTA - wierd things can happen. I can envision a scenario where you accidentally stab someone. It's harder to envision it would happen twice. And Gaear is right - she didn't say it was an accident - she says she didn't mean to kill him. I read that as an "accident" because if you deliberately stab someone twice in the chest, it's hard to believe you weren't at the very least intending serious injury. But yeah - serious denail issues.

 

She probably didn't mean to kill him. She might not go to jail either. Depends on her psychotic state, and there is still self defence to consider. The guy might have deserved it.

 

Another example of the "double standard". Can you imagine any situation where this defense would work on a husband?

 

TGS: As I mentioned earlier, the "I didn't mean to kill them" argument was successful in Illinois. The husband was beating his wife in a drunken rage and pinned her down. He "inadvertantly" cut off her air supply and killed her. His defense was simply, "I was beating her but I didn't mean to kill her."

The prosecutors were going for broke and only allowed a murder charge (first or second). The jury believed it to be manslaughter (after all he didn't really mean to kill her), but the charge was not on the table -- it was either murder or not guilty. The dude walked.

 

I was under the impression that intent is not necessary in a murder trial if it is reasonable to believe that the defendent is or has committed an act that can be accepted to result in possible death.
If I pushed someone and they fell over and broke their neck, it would be manslaughter, because my act (pushing the person) cannot be accepted to result in possible death.
If I beat the crap out of someone it can easily be accepted that the act could result in death to the victim.

 

I believe intent becomes important when trying to determine if it's a first or second degree murder. In Finnish law first degree murder requires prior planning and intent while second degree murder would be what you describe by beating someone to death without the explicit intent or prior plan to kill him.

We've had a few weird cases where the latter has actually been seen as manslaughter but I don't think that's the norm but on the other hand I'm not a lawyer and only have a slim basic understanding of criminal law.

I find this somewhat stunning and makes me sort of baffled how any working justice system can allow such a thing. Common sense would dictate that the sentence be given of manslaughter in that case or give the prosecution a possibility to appeal the sentence. It seems completely insane that obviously guilty people are allowed to walk free just because the prosecution named the crime incorrectly.

 

It's all generally a very grey area and it tends to vary by definition in different jurisdictions. Intent is indeed the main determiner between first and second degree murder and manslaughter.

Some goofy questions to demonstrate the many paradoxes:

• If you push someone off a 100 meter cliff but claim that you didn't mean to kill them, are you guilty only of manslaughter?
  
• If you plan to kill someone one second before you do, are you guilty of first degree murder? If so, how is that different than a crime of passion, which is typically thought of as manslaughter or second degree murder?
  
• If you wanted your business partner dead for 18 years and wrote about it at length in your journal but then only pushed him off the 100 meter cliff the very moment the opportunity innocently arose, are you only guilty of second degree murder?

Etc., etc.

I personally think that a willful attack that employs the means to kill, such as in T2's example, should be sufficient grounds for second degree murder whether you really "meant" it or not.

 

You don't see this type of thing happening much. When a proseuctor thinks someone is guilty of murder, they usually throw a manslaughter charge in there too, as a "compromise sentence" for the jury if there is any doubt at all that the killer's actions could be interpreted as not intending to kill the victim. As your comments suggest, it is typically better to put the killer away for a shorter period of time, than risk the possibility that he walks away a free man because you went for broke, and came up empty.

I think the most recent case that illustrates this is the Zimmerman case in Florida regarding the killing of Trayvan Martin. Zimmerman is on trial for both second degree murder and also for manslaughter. Obviously, if the jury decides he shot Martin in self defense, he's guilty of neither.

It's premeditation not intent for a first degree murder charge. Intent is necessary for any murder charge - if you didn't intend to kill them, it's manslaughter. If you get into a fight with someone, and you pull out a gun and shoot them, it's a pretty clear indication you intended to kill them. But in the heat of the moment, that probably would be a second degree murder charge. Now, if you drove back to your house to get a gun, and came back an hour later and shot them, that would escalate it to a first degree murder charge.

• 
  
  Well that one would be decided in court. If the jury determines that you deliberately pushed someone off 100 meter cliff, it can't possibly be manslaughter. If the defendant honestly believed that a 100 meter fall wouldn't kill someone, then they don't have the mental capacity to be on trial in the first place, and belong in a psychiatric ward more than a prison. Of course, such a person would have undergone a psych eval before standing trial anyway.
  
  
  When I served on a grand jury about seven or eight years ago, we had just such a case. It wasn't one second, but it was a matter of seconds. I don't remember all the details of the case (grand juries hear about a dozen cases a day so they blur together after a while), but the argument was that a guy shot someone twice, and while the first shot wouldn't consititute a murder charge, the second one did, even though the shots were fired only a few seconds apart. The basic argument was that the first shot incapacitated the person, meaning he no longer posed a threat, so that the second shot was murder.
  
  
  That's another one for the jury, but chance are it's not. First of all, the jury needs to decide if you did it deliberately. If so, circumstantial evidence (such as stating in a journal you wished this person was dead) would be admissible as evidence in court. And that's some pretty convincing circumstatial evidence that it was premeditated.

 

Those were mainly rhetorical questions to show the cloudiness or cloud-able-ness of the principals involved.

Worked for T2's guy, and the whole jury angle makes the outcome questionable at best. Who knows what they will think? If he can convincingly say that he didn't mean for the guy to die, they may believe him. If you can believe somebody who was crushing somebody else's larynx, you can believe a little innocent push. (Didn't realize it was that far, didn't think he'd actually fall, just meant to scare him, was enraged because he called me a doo-doo-head, etc.)

I've heard in some circles that even a split second of premeditation constitutes first degree murder. Makes you wonder about degrees though and the conclusions we draw from them. Is the split second guy that much more reprehensible (as indicated by his charge and sentencing if convicted) than, say T2's guy, even if he had been found guilty of even manslaughter, never mind second degree?

Devil's advocate - what if there simply was no evidence of premeditation? It's not illegal to hate someone or wish they were dead. Is that guy then not as bad as if he had planned it for one day or one hour or one minute or one second? For that matter, how much time really is required for premeditation? Is it even measureable? (<<-- more rhetorical questions.)

I mainly meant that the general concept of intent differentiates between the different forms of homicide. What you 'meant to do' informs the charge.

~

Interestingly, I've heard manslaughter further defined in some circles as being mutually exclusive with knowingly creating a deathly situation or doing something that a normal person should know would risk death or serious injury. That seems to suggest that shooting someone in the face at point blank range is always murder whether you meant it or not. I don't see why choking to the point of unconsciusness and death would be any different.

 

Well. I guess. I don't agree with the jury ruling, but I suppose it's possible to choke someone without crushing their larynx or causing them to die, but I think it's very unlikely that you can push someone off a 100 meter cliff - have them impact the ground at approaching terminal velocity - and somehow survive.

I don't know. That's a question better answered by a lawyer. I know that drunk drivers that kill someone are typically charged with manslaughter, even though getting behind the wheel while drunk would certainly be considered a potentially deathly situation and doing something that would risk at least serious injury.

 

Fixed. All lawyers ever do is make things more difficult to understand. That's their job.

"You're honor, I have a note here from my client's doctor which states that my client is unable to reliably judge distances due to deficiencies in binocular vision. Clearly, thus, my client had only the purist of intentions when he pushed that man off the cliff. We move to have this case dismissed and would like the state to pay my fees and other damages resulting from my client's pain and suffering at the hands of these awful prosecutors."

True, but it would be absent carrying out an intentional attack, unlike choking somebody.