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Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which the convicted criminal is to remain in prison for the rest of their natural life. Crimes that result in life imprisonment are considered extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, theft, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
Burglary, also called breaking and entering (B&E) and housebreaking, is the act of illegally entering a building or other areas without permission, typically with the intention of committing a further criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, larceny, robbery, or murder, but most jurisdictions include others within the ambit of burglary. To commit burglary is to burgle, a term back-formed from the word burglar, or to burglarize.
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 an offence that involves a breach of an objective standard of behaviour expected of a defendant. It may be contrasted with strictly liable offences, which do not consider states of mind in determining criminal liability, or offenses that requires mens rea, a mental state of guilt.
Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term of imprisonment for certain crimes, commonly serious or 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.
Capital murder refers to a category of murder in some parts of the US for which the perpetrator is eligible for the death penalty. In its original sense, capital murder was a statutory offence of aggravated murder in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, which was later adopted as a legal provision to define certain forms of aggravated murder in the United States. Some jurisdictions that provide for death as a possible punishment for murder, such as California, do not have a specific statute creating or defining a crime known as capital murder; instead, death is one of the possible sentences for certain kinds of murder. In these cases, "capital murder" is not a phrase used in the legal system but may still be used by others such as the media.
Murder is an offence under the common law legal system of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to unlawfully cause either death or serious injury. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker 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 Act1900 (NSW) is an Act of the Parliament of New South Wales that defines an extensive list of offences and sets out punishments for the majority of criminal offences in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The Act, alongside the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) and the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), form the almost complete basis of criminal law for the State. It is the primary criminal law statute of NSW, and which formed the basis for the Australian Capital Territory's Crimes Act1900 (ACT).
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 be 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, unless the sentence is commuted or pardoned by the Sovereign of the Netherlands. However, this happens and few appeals to the King for clemency have ever been successful.
The Portuguese Penal Code was adopted in 1982 by Decree-Law no. 400/82, of September 23, entering into force on January 1, 1983. It has seen multiple amendments, but has been subject of two major reforms in 1995, by Decree-Law no. 48/95, of March 15, and in 2007, by Law no. 59/2007. The Penal Code devotes a chapter on “crimes against human life”, where murder is included; despite that other crimes, in their aggravated form, may be considered, in other countries, to be included in murder. Murder may also be found in special legislation, namely in the Code of Military Justice, adopted in 2003 by Law no. 100/2003, of November 15, and in the Penal and Disciplinary Code of the Merchant Navy, adopted in 1940 by Decree-Law no. 33252/43, of November 20. The Portuguese Constitution expressly forbids the death penalty and life imprisonment. Additionally, since 1997, the Constitution does not allow the extradition of anyone who would be subject to any of those two forms of punishment at the requesting country. Unless binding assurances are given that the suspect will not be sentenced to either death penalty or life imprisonment, the extradition must be rejected.
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, which in other states is divided into voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter such as 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 [ bare URL 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)
- ↑ "Sweden: New Sentencing Rules Remove Exceptions for Young Offenders". Library of Congress .
- ↑ https://www.government.se/4a4563/contentassets/7a2dcae0787e465e9a2431554b5eab03/the-swedish-criminal-code.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
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