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Old 11-29-2007, 01:54 AM
Howard Treesong Howard Treesong is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2004
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Default Re: Man kills 2 People While 911 Is Telling Him Not To

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Intent means that you intend the act. Whether the actor thinks it is lawfull doesn't matter.

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Yes I know, but as it's discussed here [ QUOTE ]
In criminal law, for a given actus reus ("guilty act"), the requirement to prove intent consists of showing mens rea (mental state, "guilty mind").

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My recollection is that murder one requires specific intent, i.e. an intention to kill. There are also crimes of so-called "general intent," where all you have to do is intend the action itself and not the outcome. Thus, if I intend to fire a bullet up into the air and it comes down on someone's head, I'm surely guilty of manslaughter (a general intent crime) but not murder one (because I did not specifically intend to harm anyone).

The line is of course not always so clean. If I fire a bullet towards a crowd, a jury could infer specific intent from that action.

Here, there's no doubt that the shooter intended to kill the guys when he pulled the trigger. The question here is whether he's justified in so doing.