About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

85 Colum. L. Rev. 786 (1985)
Defining Unintended Murder

handle is hein.journals/clr85 and id is 804 raw text is: NOTES
DEFINING UNINTENDED MURDER
INTRODUCTION
Most state criminal statutes, and the Model Penal Code, distin-
guish murder from manslaughter on the basis of whether the actor in-
tended to kill his victim.1 Since the days of the common law, however,
certain actions, while not undertaken with intent to kill, have been
deemed equivalent to murder when they caused a death. For example,
a terrorist, A, who plants a bomb in a car on a busy street, may be found
guilty of murder when someone is killed in the explosion although A
neither knew nor cared that the bomb would kill anyone. In the lan-
guage of the Model Penal Code, A is guilty of extreme indifference
murder.'2 Despite widespread agreement that certain unintended kill-
ings should be treated as murder, states continue to struggle in search
of a satisfactory means of distinguishing such killings from manslaugh-
ter. States have taken numerous approaches in attempting to define
unintended murder according to varying aspects of the defendant's act,
or by some facet of his state of mind. None of the approaches has
worked.
This Note argues that unintended murder should be defined by the
defendant's state of mind. Part I traces the history of unintended mur-
1. In this Note, intent means purpose or knowledge. These mental states
are defined as follows:
Kinds of Culpability Defined.
(a) Purposely.
A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offense
when:
(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is
his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a
result; and
(ii) if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the
existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.
(b) Knowingly.
A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense
when:
(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant cir-
cumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circum-
stances exist; and
(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is
practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.
Model Penal Code § 2.02(2) (Proposed Official Draft 1962).
A growing majority of states, as well as the Model Penal Code, use purpose and
knowledge to grade homicides. See id. §§ 210.2-210.4; Robinson, A Brief History of
Distinctions in Criminal Culpability, 31 Hastings L.J. 815, 816 (1980).
2. Model Penal Code § 210.2(1)(b) (Proposed Official Draft 1962).
786

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most