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Attempted murder is acrime ofattempt in various jurisdictions.
Section 239 of theCriminal Code makes attempted murder punishable by a maximum oflife imprisonment. If a gun is used, theminimum sentence is four, five or seven years, dependent on prior convictions and relation toorganized crime.[1]
In Englishcriminal law, attempted murder is the crime of simultaneously preparing to commit anunlawful killing and having aspecific intention to cause the death of a human being under theKing's Peace. The phrase "more than merely preparatory" is specified by theCriminal Attempts Act 1981 to denote the fact that preparation for a crime by itself does not constitute an "attempted crime".[citation needed]
InEngland and Wales, as an "attempt", attempted murder is an offence under section 1(1) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 and is anindictable offence which carries a maximum penalty oflife imprisonment (the same as the mandatory sentence for murder). The corresponding legislation forNorthern Ireland is section 3(1) of theCriminal Attempts and Conspiracy (Northern Ireland) Order 1983 (No.1120 (N.I.13)).[citation needed]
Themens rea (Latin for the "guilty mind") for murder is an intention to kill or causegrievous bodily harm,[2] whereas attempted murder depends on an intention to kill and an overt act towards committing homicide. Attempted murder is only the planning of a murder and acts taken towards it, not the actual killing, which is the murder. This makes the offence very difficult to prove and it is more common for a lesser charge to be preferred under theOffences against the Person Act 1861.[citation needed]
However, inR v Morrison [2003] 1 WLR 1859, theCourt of Appeal considered the issue ofalternative verdicts on an indictment with a single count of attempted murder. Morrison had gone into a shop with two other men on a robbery with a firearm. They demanded money and one of the men shot at the shopkeeper who suffered only minor injury. The prosecution had many opportunities to add other counts before thetrial but failed to act. Having heard the case, thejudge expressed his view that thejury could consider an attemptedgrievous bodily harm (GBH) under section 18 of the 1861 Act and Morrison was duly convicted of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm. The Court of Appeal confirmed that attempting to cause grievous bodily harm is a valid alternative to attempted murder because there can be no intention to kill someone without the intention also to cause grievous bodily harm.[citation needed]
This is a practical decision to ensure that the criminal justice system did not allow a guilty person to walk away because only one charge had been preferred. But it is not necessarily a good general principle[citation needed] because, ineuthanasia for example, a person assisting intends to cause death, but with no suffering. That attempting to cause grievous bodily harm must be an alternative verdict should the intended victim not die would be a strange outcome because there is no intention to cause any long-lasting and serious injury: the two attempted offences have differentmens rea requirements so that proof of intent to murder would not necessarily meet the requirement for section 18 of the 1861 Act.[citation needed]
First, acting deliberately and intentionally or recklessly with extreme disregard for human life, the person attempted to kill someone; and the person did something that was a substantial step toward committing the crime. Mere preparation is not considered a substantial step toward committing a crime.[citation needed]
There must be more than merely preparatory acts and, although the defendant may threaten death, this may not provide convincingevidence of an intention to kill unless the words are accompanied by relevant action, e.g. finding and picking up a weapon and making serious use of it, or making a serious and sustained physical attack without a weapon.[citation needed]
The defences ofduress andnecessity are not available to a person charged with attempted murder. Conversely, the statutory defence ofmarital coercion is, on the face of the statute, available to a wife charged with attempted murder.[3][4]
Prior to 1967,sections 11 to 15 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 created a number of offences of attempting to commit murder by various specified means (ss.11 to 14), and an offence of attempting to commit murder by any means not specified in those offences (s.15).[citation needed]
After the repeal of these offences by theCriminal Law Act 1967, attempted murder was allowed to subsist atcommon law until the enactment of the 1981 Act.[citation needed]
Attempted murder is a crime atcommon law in Scotland. Attempted murder is the same as the offence of murder in Scots law with the only difference being that the victim has not died.[5] The offence of murder was defined inDrury v HM Advocate:
[M]urder is constituted by any wilful act causing the destruction of life, by which the perpetrator either wickedly intends to kill or displays wicked recklessness as to whether the victim lives or dies.
Intention can be inferred from the circumstances of the case. Wicked recklessness is determined objectively[6] and is "recklessness so gross that it indicates a state of mind which falls to be treated as wicked and depraved as the state of mind of a deliberate killer."[7] As with all common law offences in Scotland, the maximum punishment available is life imprisonment.[citation needed]
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Note: Crimes vary byjurisdiction. Not all types are listed here. | ||
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| Againstjustice | ||
| Against animals | ||
| Sexual offenses | ||
| Inchoate offenses | ||
