Is there a real difference between first- and second-degree murder?
On September 7, 2007, William Eugene Davis shot his two sisters and the mother-in-law of one of the sisters each in the throat, one shot per person, killing all three of them with a shotgun. For whatever reason, it took a year and a half to convict him of the murders.
Defense attorney Craig Corgan argued that Davis is an alcoholic who also suffers from bipolar disorder. Corgan said Davis had an alcohol-induced blackout when he was accused of shooting the victims and does not recall what happened.
Physicians testified that Davis’ blood-alcohol level following the shootings was .308 — almost four times the legal limit of .08. An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation toxicologist said authorities conducted the test on serum and that the result would translate to a reading of .260 when applied to whole blood.
“Mr. Davis is a drunk. Mr. Davis is a man with mental illness,” Corgan told Davis’ jury. “That’s hardly the profile of a cold-blooded killer.”
Whatever might or might not also define the profile of a “cold-blooded killer,” shooting three people in the throat with a shotgun would seem to qualify. The defense’s focus on “cold-blooded” here, on how drunk the murderer was, the effort to muddle intent because of mental illness, is to be expected.
If Davis would be less likely to shoot three women with a shotgun when sober, that is of little comfort now and little comfort in general, since he apparently, as an alcoholic, tends to drink and is not always sober. He is a great danger to society because once he starts drinking, he might start shooting. If his alleged mental illness makes it more difficult for him to stop himself from shooting people with shotguns, that is yet another reason to consider him to be a great danger. His mental illness and alcoholism are not reasons to consider him to be less of a danger to society than a coldly calculating murderer. Are they reasons to hold him less responsible for the murders he committed?
Clearly, whether he is mentally ill or a drunk or both or neither, Davis should, at the least, never be free again to shoot anyone else. District Attorney Greg Mashburn “is seeking the death penalty for Davis, but he also could be sentenced to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.” We might expect that Davis’ sentence will not allow for parole, but at this stage it remains a possibility. Given that Davis killed three people, and there are cases of murderers who do get parole and then go on to kill again, we might ask why that possibility even exists.
Let’s be clear — we’re not talking about accidental or negligent homicide or manslaughter. Lesser charges exist to cover cases when someone does not mean to kill and does not take action that would reasonably be expected to kill, but which results in death, and people might argue that in such cases, shorter sentences and a chance at parole are justified. But Davis shot three women in the throat with a shotgun. Even if he isn’t likely to have a sentence that includes an opportunity for parole, that is one of the legal options.
His defense attorneys know that he is going to get at least a life sentence, and probably not have a possibility for parole. The only reasons to bring up his alcoholism and mental illness is the distinction we make between first- and second-degree murder and the death penalty that can result from the former. Society has decided that killing in “cold blood” is worse than killing in the heat of the moment, and that the former might demand the death penalty and the latter might not. The logic of that never quite worked for me.
Is it worse when someone kills someone after planning it for a week, or is it worse when someone kills someone after losing his temper? For the dead person and her family, it seems to be the same. For society, it could be argued that the person who kills without planning, because he got angry, is at least as big a threat to the general public as the person who planned a murder. A person with a violent temper who loses it and shoots people because they cut him off in traffic might not have set out to kill anyone that day, but is he really less of a threat to society than the coldly calculating murderer who kills someone he knows for the insurance money? We could argue that it is the random shooter, the hot temper, that poses the greater risk to society’s sense of security in any case.
The position seems to be that the calculating murderer is worse on some moral level, for those keeping score in that department. For whatever reason, some think that it is a greater moral offense to kill after planning it out, to kill in “cold-blood,” than it is to kill because you got pissed off and acted with intent but without forethought. As far as I understand, this is the difference between first- and second-degree murder and why some get the death penalty and some do not. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Maybe logic has little to do with it. First- and second-degree murder and the difference in punishments — the threat of execution — exist on some level to pressure plea deals from the accused, who will sometimes admit to second-degree murder and accept life in prison to avoid death.
Sometimes defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients committed second- and not first-degree murder illustrate how nonsensical the distinction can be. On October 4, 2007, Mustafa Ali robbed an armored car and killed two guards. “His lawyers contend he panicked when one of the guards went for his gun and [it was] not a premeditated first-degree murder.” The defense claim that Ali didn’t mean to kill anyone — oops! I’ve just shot people multiple times while robbing them — didn’t work. He was convicted of first-degree murder this week.
We’ve heard this sort of logic before. So-and-so robs a convenience store, wasn’t planning on hurting anyone. The store owner resists, or doesn’t resist but the robber gets spooked, or a cop shows up unexpectedly, and the robber shoots the store owner, or the cop. Then the defense lawyer tells the jury or the judge that the robber never intended to kill anyone. He just wanted to rob the store. He reacted, panicked, but it was not premeditated. He should be convicted of second-degree murder, because it isn’t like he set out that day to kill anyone and if no cop had happened on the store being robbed, no one would have been shot. No, he didn’t want to kill anyone. He just used a loaded gun to rob someone.
But, since that part is premeditated, since he decided to use a loaded gun to rob someone, every consequence that follows is caused by the premeditated act. Whatever consequences follow might as well be premeditated, too. Anyone who robs a store with a gun, or robs an armored car, is responsible for all of the bad consequences of that decision.
Aside from the legal maneuvering that first- and second-degree murder and varying punishments allow (plea deals and so on, which have their own problems), I don’t see any justification for the distinction between premeditated murder and murder.
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“Is it worse when someone kills someone after planning it for a week, or is it worse when someone kills someone after losing his temper?”
While both are horrible acts, I think it is worse to have planned the murder out.
“Heat of the moment” situations can happen to anyone. Guy comes home early, his wife is in the bed with another man, that sort of stuff can happen to anyone, and the guilty party doesn’t really have any control over those circumstances. It’s an emotional reaction, we all have emotional reactions.
Planning on how to kill? That’s a rational (some what) response. Much worse, IMO.
I disagree, Mike. If your “emotional reaction” to your scenario can include killing someone on purpose, you are just as guilty and deserve an equal punishment.
So you guys see no moral difference whatsoever between the guy who catches his wife cheating, and say, Jeffrey Dahmer and Timothy McVeigh?
Mike, I like you — you bring an attitude and energy and aggression to WFTC that we’re happy to have. So I am trying to keep sarcasm to a minimum as I respond here, but I do have to say that you sometimes say odd things. Maybe it’s because once an argument gets going, in the heat of the moment, winning the argument takes priority for you.
First, you’re the one, in the comment section of your Haiti post, who suggested that killing six million people was no worse than killing one person: “I see no difference between 60 lives and 100K lives. I see no difference between 1 life and a million, either.”
Yet here, you are arguing that one man killing is different from the mass murder committed by Dahmer and McVeigh.
Second, of course there is a difference between what the hypothetical man did when he found his wife in bed with another man and what Dahmer did or McVeigh did. The man who found his wife in bed did not eat people and he did not blow up a daycare and office building in an attack on the government. What they did was different. You might as well ask if what the man in your example did was morally different from what Hitler did. You are comparing apples to …. mass murder, even potentially genocide if we take your logic to the extreme, but it all misses the point.
Third, I think maybe you watched too many movies or TV shows in drawing your conclusion that second-degree murder usually applies to men catching their wives in bed. Most second-degree murder cases are not the man catching the wife in bed with another man. They are more likely to be the hypothetical situations I described, wherein a robber brings a gun to committ a crime and ends up killing someone even though that was not his conscious intent before the events unfolded.
Fourth, even in the case of a man catching his wife in bed with another man, most men in that position do not kill the other man and wife. That most do not indicates that even if emotions are high, most people have enough control to not commit murder in those circumstances. And those who do not have that kind of control in the heat of the moment present a danger to society. Are you suggesting that when faced with those circumstances, a person has no choice but to kill, that emotions are so powerful, he shouldn’t be expected to not kill? Since many in similar circumstances do not kill, it seems that people do have more control over their emotions than you suggest. And even if you are right that there is no control possible in these kinds of situations, then the crime should be blamed on temporary insanity and not considered an intentional act of murder at all. Though I recall that you argued that temporary insanity was not a defense for murder: “I don’t think that “insanity” should be a defense in a murder case.” So, it seems, you have said that state of mind should not be relevant in these cases. Yet here you are arguing that state of mind, emotion, do matter.
The last point is that your words, deliberately or otherwise, specifically contradict the point of my post: “So you guys see no moral difference whatsoever between the guy who catches his wife cheating, and say, Jeffrey Dahmer and Timothy McVeigh?” I took care in the post to point out that other people are judging the moral level of the act and that I am not. It could be argued that Dahmer had less control over his actions, because he was a crazy serial killer who ate people, than the man who discovered his wife in bed with another man. I can’t see into Dahmer’s soul, or McVeigh’s, or the man in your hypothetical example, which is why I don’t use moral equivalency to make my argument, but focus on society and the role of law in maintaining safety.
My position is not that there is no difference morally between their actions. My position is that the law should punish the actions similarly, that it is not in the interests of society to cut anyone slack whose defense is “I was really mad.” In terms of keeping us safe, through locking away/punishing murderers and deterring others, it is best for the public to understand that murder is murder and can not be tolerated, whatever the emotions might be.
As emotional as people can be, they still have choices, evidenced by the many people who do not murder when faced with similar circumstances.
All of which is not to say that there can’t be an argument for justifiable homicide, self-defense, all the rest. If someone murders someone’s child, and the parent then kills the murderer, if you were prosecuting the parent, I might not be the best person to pick for the jury. I can be emotional, too.
@ Scott
“Second, of course there is a difference between what the hypothetical man did when he found his wife in bed with another man and what Dahmer did or McVeigh did. The man who found his wife in bed did not eat people and he did not blow up a daycare and office building in an attack on the government. What they did was different.”
That is exactly my point here, Scott.
What they did was different.
Now, I have made clear that I still consider all murder to be a horrible act (1st response), but that I consider planned murder to be worse.
Why is that?
Because planned murder -is- different. As you just noted.
True, I see no moral difference between killing 100 or 1000 people and killing 1. A murderer is a murderer, to me. What colors my view is that I KNOW I’m never going to commit a Holocaust style butchering, because I feel that it requires a certain inner evil on the part of the murderer who does such a thing. But I could feasibly see myself involved in the lover’s scuffle, and I do not consider myself an evil person, so I argue that the same as you: There is a difference.
Now, I really think it comes into play when handing out punishment…
E.G. Second degree murderer should get a “humane” execution, like hanging or the chair, the serial killer gets the End-of-Braveheart treatment.
“Cruel and unusual” is subjective, in my mind, to the severity of the crime, and that’s where the difference matters.