Assignment 7: My Words History
from O.E.D
Murder | Murder,Verb
Pronuciation- Mhur dar
Forms- Intentional Murder, Unintentional Murder, Murder in First,Second, and Third Degree
Etymology-c.1300,
murdre, from Old English
morðor (plural
morþras) "secret killing of a person, unlawful killing," also "mortal sin, crime; punishment, torment, misery," from Proto-Germanic
*murthra- (cognates: Goth
maurþr, and, from a variant form of the same root, Old Saxon
morth, Old Frisian
morth, Old Norse
morð, Middle Dutch
moort, Dutch
moord, German
Mord "murder"), from PIE
*mrtro-, from root
*mer- "to die" (see
mortal (adj.)). The spelling with
-d- probably reflects influence of Anglo-French
murdre, from Old French
mordre, from Medieval Latin
murdrum, from the Germanic root.
source(s).
http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=murder
History
1.
2.
Roughly 1 in 15,000 people is murdered in the
United States
each year (Stolinsky and Stolinsky 2000). Computed over a seventy-five
year life span, this equates to a 1 in 200 chance of being murdered at
some point in an American
’s
lifetime (Ghiglieri 1999). Homicide rates vary predictably from culture
to culture (Wilson and Daly 1997). In the United States the rates of
killing are much higher than in many industrialized nations, exceeding
those in
Canada, many western European nations, and
Japan. In many other countries, including
Venezuela,
Colombia,
and South Africa, homicide rates exceed those in the United States by
as much as a factor of ten (United Nations 1998). Among those nations
that currently exhibit low homicide rates, murder rates were much higher
in the recent past, suggesting that the relative absence of homicide is
a fairly new societal invention (Ruff 2001; Dower and George 1995). All
of these within-culture rates of homicide do not include casualties of
warfare or genocide.source(s).http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/murder.aspx
William Blackstone (citing
Edward Coke), in his
Commentaries on the Laws of England set out the
common law definition of murder, which by this definition occurs
when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully kills any
reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace, with malice
aforethought, either express or implied.[2]
The elements of common law murder are:
- Unlawful
- killing
- of a human
- by another human
- with malice aforethought.
The Unlawful – This distinguishes murder from killings that are done within the boundaries of
law, such as
capital punishment and justified
self-defense. The killing of enemy
combatants by lawful combatants and
non-combatants killed due to
collateral damage during an
armed conflict are also excluded from the definition of murder.
Killing – At common law life ended with
cardiopulmonary arrest – the total and permanent cessation of blood circulation and respiration.
With advances in medical technology courts have adopted irreversible
cessation of all brain function as marking the end of life
of a human – This element presents the issue of when life begins. At common law a fetus was not a human being. Life began when the fetus passed through the birth canal and took its first breath.
by another human – At early common law,
suicide was considered murder.The requirement that the person killed be someone other than the perpetrator excluded suicide from the definition of murder.
with malice aforethought – Originally
malice aforethought
carried its everyday meaning – a deliberate and premeditated (prior
intent) 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)
At common law
According to Blackstone, English
common law identified murder as a
public wrong At common law, murder is considered to be
malum in se,
that is an act which is evil within itself. An act such as murder is
wrong/evil by its very nature. And it is the very nature of the act
which does not require any specific detailing or definition in the law
to consider murder a crime
Some jurisdictions still take a
common law view of murder. In such jurisdictions,
precedent
case law or previous decisions of the courts of law defines what is
considered murder. However, although the common law is by nature
flexible and adaptable, in the interests both of certainty and of
securing convictions, most common law jurisdictions have
codified their criminal law and now have statutory definitions of murder.
Exclusions
General
Although laws vary by country, there are circumstances of exclusion that are common in many legal systems.
- Self-defense:
acting in self-defense or in defense of another person is generally
accepted as legal justification for killing a person in situations that
would otherwise have been murder. However, a self-defense killing might
be considered manslaughter if the killer established control of the
situation before the killing took place. In the case of self-defense it
is called a "justifiable homicide"
- Unlawful killings without malice or intent are considered manslaughter.
- In many common law countries, provocation
is a partial defense to a charge of murder which acts by converting
what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter (this is
voluntary manslaughter, which is more severe than involuntary
manslaughter)
- Accidental killings are considered homicides. Depending on the circumstances, these may or may not be considered criminal offenses; they are often considered manslaughter.
- Suicide does not constitute murder in most societies. Assisting a suicide, however, may be considered murder in some circumstances.
- Killing of enemy combatants by lawful combatants in accordance with lawful orders in war, although illicit killings within a war may constitute murder or homicidal war crimes. (see the Laws of war article)
Specific to certain countries
- Capital punishment:
some countries practice the death penalty. Capital punishment ordered
by a legitimate court of law as the result of a conviction in a criminal trial with due process for a serious crime. The 47 Member States of the Council of Europe are prohibited from using the death penalty.
- Euthanasia, doctor assisted suicide: the administration of lethal drugs by a doctor to a terminally ill patient, if the intention is solely to alleviate pain, is seen in many jurisdictions as a special case (see the doctrine of double effect and the case of Dr John Bodkin Adams).
- A killing simply to prevent the theft of one's property may or may
not be legal, depending on the jurisdiction. In the US, such a killing
is legal in Texas.
In recent years, Texas has been the scene of some very controversial
incidents that involved killing to protect property, that have led to
discussions of the laws and social norms of the state (see Joe Horn shooting controversy). In a highly controversial case, in 2013, a jury in south Texas acquitted a man who killed a prostitute,
who, after receiving $150 from the man in exchange for sex, refused to
have sex with the man, and attempted to run away with his money. The
man's lawyer argued that the man was trying to retrieve property which
was stolen during night time, an action which allows for the use of
deadly force in Texas. The jury accepted this defense. There was major
controversy in this case, due to the fact that there were questions
about whether the money was in fact stolen, since the man had given it
voluntarily to the prostitute, and the "contract" of prostitution is in
fact an illegal contract in Texas, since both buying and selling sex are
criminal offenses.[12][13]
- Killing an intruder who is found by an owner to be in the owner's
home (having entered unlawfully): legal in most US states (see Castle doctrine).
- Killing to prevent specific forms of aggravated rape/sexual assault - killing of attacker by the potential victim or by witnesses to the scene; this is especially the case in regard to child rape- legal in parts of the US and in various countries
- In some parts of the world, especially in jurisdictions which apply Sharia law, the killing of a woman or girl in specific circumstances (e.g., when she commits adultery and is killed by husband or other family members) known as honor killing, is not considered a homicide. For example, in Jordan, part of article 340 of the Penal Code states that "he
who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing
adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any
penalty."
Victim
All jurisdictions require that the victim be a natural person; that is a
human being who was still alive before being murdered. In other words, under the law, one cannot murder a
cadaver, a
corporation, a non-human
animal, or any other non-human
organism such as a plant or bacterium.
California's murder statute,
Penal Code Section 187, was interpreted by the
Supreme Court of California in 1994 as not requiring any proof of the viability of the fetus as a prerequisite to a murder conviction
This holding has two implications. The first is a defendant in
California can be convicted of murder for killing a fetus which the
mother herself could have terminated without committing a crime.
The second, as stated by Justice
Stanley Mosk
in his dissent, because women carrying nonviable fetuses may not be
visibly pregnant, it may be possible for a defendant to be convicted of
intentionally murdering a person he did not know existed
dər \ˈmər-dər\ - Mer = To Die
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