Related Research Articles
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law to describe an offense that resulted in the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods, to which additional punishments including capital punishment could be added; other crimes were called misdemeanors. Following conviction of a felony in a court of law, a person may be described as a felon or a convicted felon.
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884.
Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercraft, or forests. The crime is typically classified as a felony, with instances involving a greater degree of risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson which results in death can be further prosecuted as manslaughter or murder. A common motive for arson is to commit insurance fraud. In such cases, a person destroys their own property by burning it and then lies about the cause in order to collect against their insurance policy.
In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice. It "affects the quality of the actor's state of mind as an indicator of moral blameworthiness."
Vehicular homicide is a crime that involves the death of a person other than the driver as a result of either criminally negligent or murderous operation of a motor vehicle.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when someone is killed in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime, the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.
In criminal law, criminal negligence is a surrogate state of mind required to constitute a conventional offense. It is not, strictly speaking, a mens rea because it refers to an objective standard of behaviour expected of the defendant and does not refer to their mental state.
Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system. They are instituted to expedite the sentencing process and limit the possibility of irregularity of outcomes due to judicial discretion. Mandatory sentences are typically given to people who are convicted of certain serious and/or violent crimes, and require a prison sentence. Mandatory sentencing laws vary across nations; they are more prevalent in common law jurisdictions because civil law jurisdictions usually prescribe minimum and maximum sentences for every type of crime in explicit laws.
Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
In criminal law, the term offence against the person or crime against the person usually refers to a crime which is committed by direct physical harm or force being applied to another person.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
The Crimes Act 1900 is a New South Wales statute that sets out the majority of criminal offences for the state of New South Wales in Australia. It, the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914 and the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 form the majority of criminal law for New South Wales.
Homicide, according to the Spanish Criminal Code of 1995, is a crime which contravenes the legal right to "independent human life". It is found in article 138 which states: "Whoever kills another shall convicted of manslaughter, punishable with a sentence of imprisonment from ten to fifteen years".
Under the German penal code, Strafgesetzbuch, there are two sections relating to homicide:
Under Dutch law, moord (murder) is the intentional and premeditated killing of another person. Murder is punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, which is the longest prison sentence the law will allow for. Unlike in most other European countries, there is no possibility for parole for those sentenced to life in the Netherlands. It is one of the few countries in Europe where life imprisonment actually lasts for the remainder of the life of the convicted person, unless the sentence is commuted or pardoned by the Sovereign of the Netherlands. However, this rarely happens and few appeals to the King for clemency have ever been successful.
The Portuguese Penal Code was adopted in 1982 and has been revised on several occasions, most recently in 2007. It devotes a whole chapter on "crimes against human life". In fact, the very first crime addressed on that code is murder.
In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In many US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder and, in a few states, third-degree murder, followed by voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter which are not as serious, followed by reckless homicide and negligent homicide which are the least serious, and ending finally in justifiable homicide, which is not a crime. However, because there are at least 52 relevant jurisdictions, each with its own criminal code, this is a considerable simplification.
Life imprisonment is one of the five principal punishments stipulated in Article 33 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China. In the Criminal Law, there are 87 penalties for life imprisonment.
References
- ↑ https://www.government.se/4a4563/contentassets/7a2dcae0787e465e9a2431554b5eab03/the-swedish-criminal-code.pdf
- ↑ According to the law: "If the offence is gross, the sentence is imprisonment for at least one year and at most six years. When assessing whether the offence is gross, particular consideration is given to: 1. whether the act involved deliberate risk-taking of a serious kind; or 2. whether, when particular attention or skill was required, the perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol or some other substance or was otherwise guilty of neglect of a serious kind." (Section 7)
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2022-01-10/sweden-new-sentencing-rules-remove-exceptions-for-young-offenders/
- ↑ https://www.government.se/4a4563/contentassets/7a2dcae0787e465e9a2431554b5eab03/the-swedish-criminal-code.pdf
 | This article about a criminal law topic is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |