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.

• Judith Barsi (1988), child actress, shot by father
• Nancy Benoit (2007), Professional wrestling valet and manager, shot by her husband, Chris Benoit
• Steve Biko (1977), anti-Apartheid activist, beaten to deathSitting Bull (1890), Lakota-Sioux Indian chief, shot

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:

1. Unlawful
2. killing
3. of a human
4. by another human
5. 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:

1. Intent to kill,
2. Intent to inflict grievous bodily harm short of death,
3. Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (sometimes described as an "abandoned and malignant heart"), or
4. 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

Murder in the House, 
Jakub Schikaneder.

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