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MURDER

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FELONY AND MISDEMEANOUR

Most legal systems find it necessary to divide crimes into categories for various purposes connectedwith the procedure of the courts – determining, for instance,which kind of court may deal with which kind of offense.The common law originally divided crimes into two categories – felonies (the graver crimes, generally punishable with death, which resulted in forfeiture of the perpetrator’s land and goods to the crown) and misdemeanours (for which the common law provided fines or imprisonment). There were many differences in the procedure of the courts according to whether the charge was felony or ehavioror, and other matters that depended on the distinction included the power of the police to arrest a suspect on suspicion that he had committed an offense, since to arrest a suspect was generally permissible in felony, but not in ehavioror. [Suspect is someone who is thought to be guilty of a crime.] By the early 19th century it had become clear that the growth of the law had rendered this classification obsolete and in many cases inconsistent with the gravity of the offenses concerned, for example, theft was a felony, irrespective of the amount stolen or obtaining by fraud was always a ehavioror. Efforts to abolish the distinction in English law did not succeed until 1967, when the distinction was replaced by that between arrestable offenses and other offenses. [Arrestable offenses are ones punishable with five years’ imprisonment or more.] The traditional classification between felony and ehavioror has been retained in many U.S. jurisdictions and is used as the basis of determining the court that will hear the case.

 

 

In English tradition, murder was defined as the willful killing with malice aforethought of a human creature in being, the death occurring within a year and a day of the injury. Most of these elements remain in modern definitions of the crime – the requirement that the victim is “in being,” for instance, distinguishes abortion from murder. Many of the problems of defining murder have centred on the mental element – the “malice aforethought.” The old English rule extended this concept to include not only intentional or deliberate killings but also accidental killings in the course of some other serious crime (such as robbery or rape). This rule, the felony murder rule, was adopted in many other jurisdictions, although it has often produced harsh results when death has been caused accidentally in the course of what was intended to be a minor crime. The rule was abolished in England in 1957, but since then English law has been in a state of confusion over the precise definition of murder. It is now settled that an intention to kill is not necessary and that an intention to cause serious bodily injury is sufficient. Similar problems have arisen in many U.S. jurisdictions, some of which distinguish between different degrees of murder – first-degree murder may require proof of premeditation over and above the normal requirement of intention. By the way, murder and manslaughter are not mentioned in the Koran and are subject in Islamic countries to customary law as amended by Shari’ah. [Manslaughter is the crime of killing someone illegally but not deliberately. Shari’ah is a system of religious laws followed by Muslims]. Virtually all systems treat murder as a Crime of the utmost gravity, providing in some cases the death penalty or a special form of sentence, such as a life sentence. A high proportion of murders in all societies is committed spontaneously by persons acquainted with the deceased, often a member of the same family, as a result of quarrels or provocation.