Whaley Bridge (UK) - attempted burglary / shooting

No but if you don't premeditate it then it's manslaughter (voluntary or involuntary depending on the circumstances). The law is quite clear on that.
No but it will reflect English law.
Show me.

Murder in law does not require premeditation i.e planning, murders happen in the 'heat of the moment' all the time. As I said, the bar is set at 'intel to kill or cause GBH'. Premeditation is not required, only intent.

Its very hard to prove shooting someone in the back is not murder, as I said mitigating factors will apply and whether the death was considered unlawful. i.e was it self defense.

Its not like we dont have a case tested in practice to show this, tony martin was convicted of murder.
 
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Show me.

Murder in law does not require premeditation i.e planning, murders happen in the 'heat of the moment' all the time. As I said, the bar is set at 'intel to kill or cause GBH'. Premeditation is not required, only intent.

Its very hard to prove shooting someone in the back is not murder, as I said mitigating factors will apply and whether the death was considered unlawful. i.e was it self defense.

Its not like we dont have a case tested in practice to show this, tony martin was convicted of murder.

Tony Martins conviction for murder was overturned on the grounds of diminished responsibility. It was instead changed to manslaughter. So your example supports exactly what I said, not what you said.
 
Show me where it says premeditation is required for a murder charge. Martins conviction was changed on the grounds of his mental condition. Explain how he was convicted of murder if premeditation was required? Like I said, intent is the requirement here. Mitigating factors could reduce the charge to voluntary manslaughter today which still requires intent.

Here is what the CPS says
Subject to three exceptions (which constitute partial defences to murder, and result in a conviction for manslaughter) the crime of murder is committed, where a person:

  • of sound mind and discretion (sane)
  • unlawfully kills (not self-defence or other justified killing)
  • any reasonable creature (a human being)
  • in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs)
  • under the King's Peace (not in wartime)
  • with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (in contrast to the offence of attempted murder, where only intent to kill will suffice)

The exceptions being
Where all of the elements to prove murder are present, including an intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm, a partial defence may be raised in three circumstances. Unlike a complete defence such as self-defence, these operate to reduce guilt for murder to guilt for manslaughter. They are: diminished responsibility, loss of control and killing in pursuance of a suicide pact.

Its going to come down to the actual circumstances of this particular case if one those will apply, we cant possibly know without seeing the evidence.
 
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Tony Martins conviction for murder was overturned on the grounds of diminished responsibility. It was instead changed to manslaughter. So your example supports exactly what I said, not what you said.
Not really, as you say it was overturned for Diminished Responsibility, which is another legal term and basically means he didn't know what he was doing.

So it was a murder, but because the person who committed it wasn't "all there" he couldn't be found guilty of murder and it got dropped down, if he hadn't managed to argue that factor it would have remained a murder conviction as all the other elements for murder were fulfilled (and in some ways it's telling that was the grounds they argued on for the appeal, as diminished responsibility is actually quite a high bar as it requires multiple medical experts to agree)..
 
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The people mourning him are of an entirely different culture and mindset to you and I. One that doesn’t see burglarising strangers as a bad thing. To them he was their friend, and that’s what matters, not that he was a cretin and it’s a good thing for society he is no longer with us.

I really don't think I'd stop caring about a family member or friend if I found out that they were a criminal. Would I be defending the guy that shot them? Perhaps not, but I'd certainly still love them.

It would also depend on the type and severity of the crime, but burgularly, I could cope.
 
Murder requires the intention to kill or cause serious harm.

This is correct (in England and Wales).

No but if you don't premeditate it then it's manslaughter (voluntary or involuntary depending on the circumstances). The law is quite clear on that.

This is not correct (in England and Wales).

If I spontaneously bop you around the head with a metal pipe with an intention to cause harm (but not death), then this could be found as murder if you die because of the intention to cause serious harm.

Likewise, the transfer of malice also applies - if I swing at you and miss, and hit @200sols instead and HE dies, I could also be held for his murder despite not intending it.
 
Not really, as you say it was overturned for Diminished Responsibility, which is another legal term and basically means he didn't know what he was doing.

So it was a murder, but because the person who committed it wasn't "all there" he couldn't be found guilty of murder and it got dropped down, if he hadn't managed to argue that factor it would have remained a murder conviction as all the other elements for murder were fulfilled (and in some ways it's telling that was the grounds they argued on for the appeal, as diminished responsibility is actually quite a high bar as it requires multiple medical experts to agree)..

High levels of stress/fear/depression can form the state of not being "all there".

I think in his instance is was depression resulting from stress.
 
This is correct (in England and Wales).



This is not correct (in England and Wales).

If I spontaneously bop you around the head with a metal pipe with an intention to cause harm (but not death), then this could be found as murder if you die because of the intention to cause serious harm.

Likewise, the transfer of malice also applies - if I swing at you and miss, and hit @200sols instead and HE dies, I could also be held for his murder despite not intending it.

You premeditated the picking up and swinging of a pipe to cause harm. It is, as you say, irrelevant that you missed me and hit him.

If you were, say, swinging a pipe at a tree and hit one of us, manslaughter. There was no prior intent to cause harm.
 
You premeditated the picking up and swinging of a pipe to cause harm. It is, as you say, irrelevant that you missed me and hit him.

If you were, say, swinging a pipe at a tree and hit one of us, manslaughter. There was no prior intent to cause harm.

I understand why you are framing it that way as all of these things are very similar sounding (and perhaps in practice there isn’t much of a practical difference) but if you really want to know what the actual test for the UK is, either look in a law book, or even on the CPS’s own guidance here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidan...cide-and-causing-or-allowing-death-or-serious

Subject to three exceptions (which constitute partial defences to murder, and result in a conviction for manslaughter) the crime of murder is committed, where a person:

  • of sound mind and discretion (sane)
  • unlawfully kills (not self-defence or other justified killing)
  • any reasonable creature (a human being)
  • in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs)
  • under the King's Peace (not in wartime)
  • with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (in contrast to the offence of attempted murder, where only intent to kill will suffice)

In the US, there is reference to murder being ‘premeditated’ with relation to ‘first degree murder’, but there is not a formal requirement / test of it being ‘premeditated’ in England and Wales because we deal with it via the aforementioned test of ‘intending to kill or cause really serious harm’.
 
I understand why you are framing it that way as all of these things are very similar sounding (and perhaps in practice there isn’t much of a practical difference) but if you really want to know what the actual test for the UK is, either look in a law book, or even on the CPS’s own guidance here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidan...cide-and-causing-or-allowing-death-or-serious



In the US, there is reference to murder being ‘premeditated’ with relation to ‘first degree murder’, but there is not a formal requirement / test of it being ‘premeditated’ in England and Wales because we deal with it via the aforementioned test of ‘intending to kill or cause really serious harm’.

Well yes.

How do you intentionally kill someone without thinking about it first (assuming sound mind).
 
Well you can intentionally kill someone and it not be murder if one of the three mitigations apply. Voluntary manslaughter is what others would call second degree murder. But generally premeditatation means planning prior to the event, not something happening during the event. Premeditated usually will increase the tariff applied but as said its not required to secure a murder conviction.
 
Well you can intentionally kill someone and it not be murder if one of the three mitigations apply. Voluntary manslaughter is what others would call second degree murder. But generally premeditatation means planning prior to the event, not something happening during the event. Premeditated usually will increase the tariff applied but as said its not required to secure a murder conviction.

What's the timescale for premeditation?
 
Well yes.

How do you intentionally kill someone without thinking about it first (assuming sound mind).

I think the point is more that you can, in E&W, murder someone without intending to kill that specific person. Put another way, you can commit murder by ‘merely’ acting with intention to seriously hurt someone else entirely.

‘Premeditation’ is a little different to that as it suggests an element of ‘advanced planning’ or ‘lying in wait’, but it could be much less than that temporarily (perhaps only being a moment). So there is an overlap with the E&W requirements but in the US this puts more emphasis on there being a specific victim in mind.

Really, the impact of having a test of premeditation in the US (usually associated with ‘first degree’ murder) is that the killer absolutely wanted that specific person dead - making it their most serious crime. Therefore what might be a murder in E&W might not be a ‘first degree’ murder in the US.
 
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I think the point is more that you can, in E&W, murder someone without intending to kill that specific person. Put another way, you can commit murder by ‘merely’ acting with intention to seriously hurt someone else entirely.

‘Premeditation’ is a little different to that as it suggests an element of ‘advanced planning’ or ‘lying in wait’, but it could be much less than that temporarily (perhaps only being a moment). So there is an overlap with the E&W requirements but in the US this puts more emphasis on there being a specific victim in mind.

Really, the impact of having a test of premeditation in the US is that the killer absolutely wanted that specific person dead - making is their most serious crime. Therefore what might be a murder in E&W might not be a ‘first degree’ murder in the US.

But I'm not and at no point have been talking about the US.
A really easy way to stop this is just to point out that intentional and premeditation are synonyms.
 
But I'm not and at no point have been talking about the US.
A really easy way to stop this is just to point out that intentional and premeditation are synonyms.

… but that’s there point, it’s not necessarily the same because a premeditated murder means that the killer ‘wanted the victim dead’.

This is different test from ‘wanting to cause serious harm’ and ‘someone dying as a result’.

Anyway I think we’ve gone over this (ironically) to death :p - I will stop my own killing of the thread! :D
 
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