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Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter).
Followed up with explanations.
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with malice aforethought—originally malice aforethought carried its everyday meaning—a deliberate and premeditated killing of another motivated by ill will. Murder necessarily required that an appreciable time pass between the formation and execution of the intent to kill. The courts broadened the scope of murder by eliminating the requirement of actual premeditation and deliberation as well as true malice. All that was required for malice aforethought to exist is that the perpetrator act with one of the four states of mind that constitutes "malice."
The four states of mind recognized as constituting "malice" are:
Intent to kill,
Intent to inflict grievous bodily harm short of death,
Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (sometimes described as an "abandoned and malignant heart"), or
Intent to commit a dangerous felony (the "felony-murder" doctrine).
Now, I said, Murder is murder, whether intentional or not. Now, if it wasn't intentional, BUT,
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Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life
which means that by your actions be they intentioned or not, if understood that by performing those actions circumstances could take place that the end result is loss of life, and you perform these actions ANYWAYS, it's murder.
So, by your own cite, you have re-enforced my statement.
I do not believe drunks are capable of understanding the "Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life" part. They do not see the risk of driving drunk so they just do it anyway.
I do not see that a drunk driver meets the criteria for Murder. I believe the proper charge would be manslaughter is someone died or reckless endangerment if there were, or not, injuries resulting from the crash. In the case of a death the responsible party should pay all the costs, including replacing the income of a head of family, to the injured party. I can see them becoming effectively enslaved to the people they injured but do not see any reason to jail them for being dumb.
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I think anyone who is DWI/DUI and kills anyone should have to do their states maximum term for manslaughter....that goes for in a boat,atv or anything mobile IMO.
It is one of only a few mandatory sentences I could fully support.
Yes. It means that knowing what alcohol does to your reflexes you are still willing to go out and kill someone just because you are too selfish to not drive or to have a designated driver.
Basically you make a conscious decision to risk killing people. In essence saying you are completely OK with that risk. That to me is at best attempted murder. Chosing to play Russian Roulette with the lives of other human beings. I will never see how we can excusethe behaviour of those losers simply because they are drunk and thus did not know better. It is like excusing a man for raping a woman because he was drunk and unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. That argument has never made sense to me.
I think anyone who is DWI/DUI and kills anyone should have to do their states maximum term for manslaughter....that goes for in a boat,atv or anything mobile IMO.
It is one of only a few mandatory sentences I could fully support.
What about people who fall asleep behind the wheel or don't look before making a turn or arent paying attention and run a red light and kills someone? What about people who are unhealthy and have a heart attack behind the wheel?
What about people who fall asleep behind the wheel or don't look before making a turn or arent paying attention and run a red light and kills someone? What about people who are unhealthy and have a heart attack behind the wheel?
Apples and oranges.
People can't make themselves have a heart attack or stop their heart attack.
People can certainly choose whether to drink and drive or not.
I do not believe drunks are capable of understanding the "Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life" part. They do not see the risk of driving drunk so they just do it anyway.
I do not see that a drunk driver meets the criteria for Murder. I believe the proper charge would be manslaughter is someone died or reckless endangerment if there were, or not, injuries resulting from the crash. In the case of a death the responsible party should pay all the costs, including replacing the income of a head of family, to the injured party. I can see them becoming effectively enslaved to the people they injured but do not see any reason to jail them for being dumb.
That would be mens rea.
Drunk drivers do not have a criminal intent.
Someone who enters a convenient store with the intention of stealing money and then shoots employees or patrons has formed the requisite intent for murder.
A drunk driver who gets behind the wheel of car has no intent of causing harm to others. Now, of course, there are exceptions. There are people who got behind the wheel and intentionally plowed their car into a crowd of people for the express purpose of causing injury and harm, but in most cases those persons are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs (although a few were).
It's also generally recognized that people who are mentally impaired cannot form a criminal intent. That's what insanity and temporary insanity are about, or things like the "Twinkie Defense" (no kidding -- a guy claimed eating Twinkies made him temporarily insane -- and the jury bought it -- that was San Fransisco of course).
I would never read rights to people under the influences of substances. I always did that later. To me it was incongruous to suggest that some has impaired judgment, but then their judgment is not so impaired as to understand their rights. If someone is so impaired they cannot operate a motor vehicle, then they aren't going to understand their rights.
Driving drunk is against the law .. Driving drunk "is not" murder
Driving drunk and killing someone with your car is murder.
Of course you don't have to be drunk to kill someone with your car ..
You can use any object you like to kill someone.
Sober people kill other people with their cars all the time ..
Texting, putting on your makeup, reading, eating, drinking a soda pop, failing to use a turn signal, speeding, going too slow .. and more .. can all kill people whilst behind the wheel.
It's not what you do, but rather, how you do what you do while driving that makes the difference here.
If drunk driving is murder, then so must be any accident caused by, say... Talking on a cell phone, eating food, etc.
That's actually a good point, and one that I overlooked.
I'd argue in some ways that it's even worse to have killed someone as the result of driving while distracted. At least when one is distracted (and not drunk), they should, in theory, have all of their faculties to make the right decision -- and yet clearly engage in equally fatal and irresponsible behavior. In the case of a drunk, he's just making a decision while being incapacitated.
I think people want to throw the book at drunks because our society has a certain hostility to intoxication of any sort. And I guess I get that to a point. But yeah, seriously, are we going to give life sentences to someone who bent over to pick up a lost french fry or was changing his radio station and ended up killing the person in front of him? Is that murder, too?
No. Let's be rational about this. I understand that anger feels better, but rational thought ultimately produces fairer and more just results.
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