Legal Writing

140179

Criminal law Essay #1

What is Hal’s potential criminal homicide liability for the death of Norm and Wanda?

Common law intentional homicide may be reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter if all the elements are met: 1) the killing was a result of sudden heat of passion, 2)in the same situation a reasonable person would have been also been provoked and also would have lost self control, 3) there was no cooling off period between the provoked anger and the homicide of the first or second victim.

Model Penal code lessens murder to manslaughter if the murder is committed during an extreme mental or extreme emotional disturbance. Under the Model Penal Code there are two elements that need to be proven which are one that the defendant was under an extreme emotional disturbance and two that there was a reasonable explanation or excuse for the extreme emotional disturbance.

When Hal decide to come home early and bring his wife flowers he was already in an emotional mood with it being his 20th anniversary. When he pulled up to his house and looked through the office window before entering he saw his wife in an embrace with their neighbor Norm. The embrace happening right before his eyes made him believe that they were lovers and put him into a rage where he went to the garage to get his gun with the intention of doing bodily injury and maybe even killing Norm and Wanda.

In common law Hal could get his crime reduced to voluntary homicide because all the elements are met the killing was a result of sudden heat of passion because Hall believed that Norm and Wanda were having an affair, which would enrage a reasonable person in the same situation. There was no cooling off period from the time of Hal seeing the embrace to when he responded with the gun.

The Model Penal code would lessen this crime to manslaughter because the homicide was committed during an extreme emotional disturbance. And the two elements that establish manslaughter are easily...