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.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of malice, brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
A misdemeanor is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than more serious felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences. Typically misdemeanors are punished with monetary fines or community service.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when an offender kills 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.
Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular jurisdiction has defined the offence. Unusually for those legal systems which have originated or been influenced during rule by the United Kingdom, the name of the offence associates with Scots law rather than English law.
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.
Rape is a type of sexual assault initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, under threat or manipulation, by impersonation, or with a person who is incapable of giving valid consent.
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.
Philippine criminal laws is the body of law and defining the penalties thereof in the Philippines.
In Brazil, homicide is punished under article 121 of the Penal Code. It is split into two different categories: homicídio doloso, and homicídio culposo. The penalty for intentional homicide varies from six to twenty years; the penalty for unintentional homicide varies from one to three years.
In Denmark manddrab (manslaughter) is the term used by the Danish penalty law to describe the act of intentionally killing another person. No distinction between manslaughter and murder exists. The penalty goes from a minimum of five years to imprisonment for life. The standard punishment for manslaughter - i.e. where there are neither aggravating or mitigating circumstances - is 12 years imprisonment.
Under the German penal code, Strafgesetzbuch, there are two sections relating to murder:
By Italian law, murder is regulated by articles 575–582, 584–585, and 589 of the Codice Penale.
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 most 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.
Responsibility for criminal law and criminal justice in the United States is shared between the states and the federal government.
In Croatia, murder is classified into 3 categories: ubojstvo, teško ubojstvo and usmrćenje according to the 10th section of the Criminal Law of 2011.
Murder in Cuba is classified into three major categories: murder with special circumstances, murder, and manslaughter.
Georgia is an independent European nation.
