Father Sentenced for Xbox Killing

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Alasted said:

kingofwale said:

Alasted said:
The "degree" of the murder simply refers to the intent of the assailant. Just going by the details contained in the article, I'd say the prosecution may have had trouble proving malice aforethought.

Having said that, I entered this thread expecting to make a half-witty quip about "hardcore" gamers, but this is just horrible.

Without throwing a lot of legal language that will confuse our other users. First-murder would be murder with intent, while second degree is 'ordinarily defined as 1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion"'

so that's why I think the guy deserves second degree.

Am I not correct here? (not a rhetorical question)

You may be right, king; I'm no attorney, and my armchair legalese is rusty. I was under the impression that proving second-degree murder required the difficult task of proving this horribly convoluted concept of malice aforethought. I've been wrong before, though--one more time won't hurt. Shame we don't have a resident VG Chartzer paralegal or attorney to opine on this subject.

There's one point on which I won't debate you: beating your daughter, who hasn't even seen her second birthday, to death is fucking atrocious. All things considered, I'm a pretty jaded guy, and I would've made some "hardcore" gamer wisecrack had the initial article been about those teens and twenty-somethings in the second article. I'm not touching this one with a ten-meter cattleprod, though.

 Since this was in PA it could have been a second degree charge.  Different states use different criteria for the classifications of murder, which may be your point of confusion. However, in PA 2nd degree is non-premeditated murder.

@king,

I seriously doubt you would confuse people just by using legalese.  They would know you copied and pasted it from somewhere else