Homicide: Justifiable, Elements, and Degrees of Murder

• Homicide involves the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another (murder).

Justifiable Homicide

• Killing a human being in necessary self-defense.
• Defense of habitation, property, or person.
• Against someone intending to commit a felony by violence or surprise.
• Against persons intending to enter another's habitation in a violent, riotous, tumultuous, or surreptitious manner to assault someone inside.

Elements to Arrest - Homicide

• Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought, either express or implied.

Degrees of Murder

• First-degree murder includes killings that are:
  • Perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or torture.
  • Willful, deliberate, and premeditated.
  • Committed during specific felonies like sexual assault, kidnapping, arson, robbery, burglary, home invasion, child abuse, or abuse of an older/vulnerable person.
  • Committed to avoid lawful arrest or effect escape from legal custody.
  • Committed on school property or at a school event with intent to create a great risk of death or substantial bodily harm to multiple people using hazardous means.
  • Committed in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an act of terrorism.
• Second-degree murder includes all other kinds of murder.

Malice (Expressed and Implied) Defined

• Express malice is a deliberate intention to unlawfully take a life, manifested by provable external circumstances.
• Malice is implied when no considerable provocation exists, or circumstances show an abandoned and malignant heart.

“Premeditation and Deliberation”

• Requires an intent to kill, formed in a "cool mind".
• The intent must be formulated in advance of the act of killing, allowing time for reflection.
• The time for reflection can be very brief.

Attempted Murder (NRS 193.330)

• An act done with the intent to commit a crime.
• The act must tend to, but fail to accomplish the crime.

Manslaughter (Voluntary/Involuntary)

• Voluntary manslaughter involves a serious and highly provoking injury inflicted upon the person killing, sufficient to incite irresistible passion in a reasonable person.
• Or an attempt by the person killed to commit a serious personal injury on the person killing.
• Voluntary manslaughter excludes vehicular manslaughter.
• Involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of a human being.
• Occurs during an unlawful act or a lawful act done unlawfully that likely would produces consequences.
• Involuntary manslaughter excludes vehicular manslaughter.
• If involuntary killing occurs during an unlawful act that naturally tends to destroy life or during a felonious intent, it is considered murder.

Kidnapping

• Kidnapping is the unlawful taking or transportation of a person against their will.
• Often done to hold the person unlawfully for ransom, in furtherance of another crime, or in a child custody dispute.
• First-degree kidnapping involves:
  • Seizing, confining, inveigling, enticing, abducting, concealing, or carrying away a person with the intent to hold or detain them for ransom or to commit sexual assault, extortion, or robbery.
  • For the purpose of killing the person or inflicting substantial bodily harm upon the person, or to exact money from relatives, friends for the return of the kidnapped person.
  • Taking a minor with the intent to keep, imprison, or confine them from their parents/guardians, hold them for unlawful service, or perpetrate any unlawful act upon them.
• Second-degree kidnapping involves:
  • Seizing or kidnapping another person with the intent to keep them secretly imprisoned within the State.
  • For the purpose of conveying them out of the State without authority of law.
  • Holding them to service or detaining them against their will.

Sexual Assault and Seduction

• Sexual assault is subjecting another person to sexual penetration or forcing another person to perform sexual penetration on themselves, another, or a beast against their will.
• Includes situations where the victim is mentally or physically incapable of resisting or understanding the nature of the conduct.
• Statutory sexual seduction includes:
  • Sexual intercourse or penetration by someone 18+ with someone 14-15 who is at least 4 years younger.
  • Any sexual penetration by someone 18+ with someone under 16 with the intent to arouse or gratify sexual desires.

Sexual Penetration

• Includes cunnilingus, fellatio, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of a person’s body or any object manipulated or inserted by a person into the genital or anal openings of another, including sexual intercourse.

Robbery

• Robbery is the unlawful taking of personal property from the person of another or in their presence, against their will, by means of force, violence, or fear of injury.
• The injury can be immediate or future, to the person or their family, or anyone in their company at the time of the robbery.
• Any use of force or fear is enough to constitute robbery if it causes the person to give up property.
• The victim does not need to demonstrate terror or resistance.
• Force or fear is used to:
  • Obtain or retain possession of the property.
  • Prevent or overcome resistance to the taking.
  • Facilitate escape.
• "From the presence" means proximity or control, not necessarily within eyesight.
• The degree of force used is immaterial if it compels acquiescence to the taking or escaping with the property.
• A taking constitutes robbery even if the person is unaware of the taking due to force or fear.

False Imprisonment

• False imprisonment is the illegal confinement of one individual against their will by another, violating their right to freedom of movement.
• Often involves physical force, but this is not required.
• Threat of force or arrest, or a reasonable belief that force will be used, is sufficient.
• Restraint can be imposed by physical barriers or unreasonable duress.
• Involves confinement or detention without sufficient legal authority.
• A person convicted of false imprisonment shall pay all damages sustained by the person imprisoned.

Assault and Battery (NRS 200.471, 200.481)

• Assault is unlawfully attempting to use physical force against another person.
• Intentionally placing another person in reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm.
• Battery is any willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another.

Penalties/Classification of Battery Subsection

• Battery that is not committed with a deadly weapon and does not result in substantial bodily harm is a misdemeanor.
• Unless a greater penalty is provided elsewhere.
• Battery that is not committed with a deadly weapon and results in substantial bodily harm or is committed by strangulation is a category C felony.
• Battery upon an officer, healthcare provider, school employee, taxicab driver, or transit operator performing their duty (or sports official during a sporting event) can be a category B felony.
  • This requires substantial bodily harm or strangulation, and the offender knew or should have known the victim's status.
• Battery upon an officer, healthcare provider, school employee, taxicab driver, or transit operator performing their duty (or sports official during a sporting event) is a gross misdemeanor.
  • If the person charged knew or should have known that the victim was an officer, provider of health care, school employee, taxicab driver, transit operator or sports official.
  • Unless a greater penalty is provided elsewhere.
• Battery with a deadly weapon and no substantial bodily harm, is a category B felony.
• Battery with a deadly weapon and substantial bodily harm or strangulation is a category B felony with a longer potential prison term.
• Battery by a probationer, prisoner, or parolee without a deadly weapon is a category B felony.
• Battery by a probationer, prisoner, or parolee with a deadly weapon is a category B felony. - If no substantial bodily harm to the victim results
• Battery by a probationer, prisoner, or parolee with a deadly weapon and substantial bodily harm or strangulation is a category B fel